Every table or figure used must be referred to in the text of the results section. The results section should describe the data. The discussion section contains the author s interpretation of the data in light of the original objectives and hypotheses. The discussion section should compare the conclusions of the study to the conclusions of other studies. Any unexpected results, experimental error, or problems with the procedure should be mentioned in this section.
Data are neither good nor bad, techniques and methods can be.
If there were problems, the author should describe how these problems affected the data and why. Finally, the author should use the discussion to present their interpretation of the larger meaning of their work. In this section, the cited works used by the author are listed in alphabetical order. This is the aspect of scientific papers that varies most among journals in terms of format. For this course we will use the form found in journals such as the American Journal of Botany and Ecology.