Writing a Laboratory Research Report
Dr. Rick Hershberger - The Bioactive Site

PURPOSE and TONE

The end product of a scientist’s professional efforts is knowledge and understanding of the natural world. For this knowledge to have any value, it must be shared with others, not only so others may apply and extend that knowledge but also so peers can examine the data, critically evaluate the experimental design, and confirm the validity of the results and conclusions. The primary way in which scientific information is disseminated is through the publication of research reports in peer-reviewed journals. Whether it’s a report of a scientific breakthrough in a prestigious journal or a lab report to your undergraduate instructor, communicating your work through a written report is a fundamental part of the process of scientific inquiry. For the professional scientist, it is a task that you should strive to master.

The laboratory research report is a form of technical writing, and as such is very unlike the writing you typically do in English Composition class. The purpose of technical writing is not to excite, coerce, or stimulate emotion, but to record, describe, inform, and explain. Hype, flowery language, and emotion are not to be found in a laboratory report. The purpose of the laboratory report is to provide a detailed, accurate, and clear description of what experimental procedures were performed, what results were observed, what conclusions were drawn, and the relevance and background of the experiment. Your writing should be straightforward, without embellishments.

TARGET AUDIENCE

Write your laboratory report to an audience of fellow students taking the course in future semesters. A well written report would be able to be used as a substitute to the laboratory manual. The report should be detailed enough, accurate enough, and clear enough so that another student in the same class who has not performed the experiment could use your report to guide them in conducting the experimental procedures, interpreting the results, drawing valid conclusion, and understanding why the methods and experiment worked the way that they did. You can assume that they know something about basic biology and general laboratory procedures, but do not know specifically about the organisms, genes, cells, proteins, growth media, chemicals, lab instruments, materials and methods you used in the particular experiment your report summarizes.

FORMAT OF THE SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL ARTICLE

Research reports follow the form outlined below. Each of the headings below should be a separate section in your paper, with the heading (Title, Abstract, Introduction, etc.) clearly indicated in bold text in your report. Each section plays a particular role in the overall paper, guiding the reader through your thinking behind the research. Similarly, each type of information you present to your reader has an assigned place within the paper. Because science is frequently complex, technical, and specialized, your writing must be clear, concise, lucid, well-reasoned, and directed to your target audience.

Additional instructions on writing laboratory research reports, including samples, are available at.

• http://www.mhhe.com/biosci/genbio/maderinquiry/writing.html
• http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/ScienceReport.html
• http://www.ncsu.edu/labwrite/res/res-studntintro-home.html

Before writing your first lab report, make sure you study this sample report, annotated with helpful explanations.  Note: Unlike their sample report, do not write separate discussion and conclusion sections.

• http://www.ncsu.edu/labwrite/res/labreport/res-anno-sample-labrep.html

Title

Create an informative title that states the key point of the paper, usually the key experimental finding or discovery. “Microwave radiation reduces seed fertility” is a more informative title, clearly presenting the key result, than descriptive titles such as “Testing the effects of microwave radiation on seed fertility” or worse yet “Studies of seed fertility and microwave radiation.” Find an action word that highlights the result or conclusion (“reduces” in my example) and use it.

Place your name, the names of your lab partners, the course number/name, your instructor’s name, and the date on the front page under the title.

Abstract

The abstract is often made available on electronic databases, and it’s frequently the only portion of the paper that many scientists in other fields read. It is a brief, one paragraph summary of the major points of the paper:

•  What question or hypothesis was being addressed?

• Why is this question important?

• What experiments were done?

• What results were obtained?

• What conclusions can be derived?

• Why are those conclusions important?

These points will all be presented again, in more detail, in the following sections of the paper, so the abstract need be only a brief, concise description of each of these points. But your abstract may be read separate from the rest of the paper, by scientists outside of your field of expertise, so it should make enough sense by itself for the reader to understand the essential points of your work. It allows a casual reader to decide whether he/she has interest in reading the complete report.

Introduction

The introduction sets the stage for your work. You should describe the background for your work, what is already known through previous studies, what questions need to be answered, why those questions are important, what your goal(s) are for conducting your work, the desired outcome, etc. Here is where you describe the context in which your work was conducted, and in which it should be appreciated.

At the end of the Introduction section, make sure you clearly state the goal or intended outcome of the experiment. Be specific about what you expected to achieve. This should be stated as a scientific goal (test a hypothesis; create something), not an educational goal (learn something, experience something, become familiar with something).

Materials and Methods

Readers outside of your field of study may not be as acutely interested in the details of how the experiments were performed. This does not make this section any less important; it is vital for those researchers who will use and extend your findings by performing related experiments. Any new experimental techniques, or procedures you have modified, are described in sufficient detail to allow other researchers to independently repeat your experiments in their own labs. Common or routine techniques and procedures are outlined in less detail, with references made to the source of the standard procedure (published report, lab manual, etc.). This section only contains the how of the research, not what was discovered.

Do not copy or paraphrase the instructions you followed out of a lab manual or handout. The instructions you are given for a lab or procedure are typically written in the imperative tense (“do this”, “measure that”). In your research report, you are to write instead in the past tense in the passive voice (“measurements were taken…”, “samples were incubated…”). Do not use first-person, active voice (“I took measurements…”).

You only need to describe the experimental procedures in enough detail so that a peer knowledgeable in this field can understand what experiments were performed and how. Do not give a step-by-step description of each specific task or action.

Results

This section is just what it says it is: results. Present your observations and data in the form of tables, graphs, charts, diagrams, pictures, and text. This is not where you describe how the experiment was performed (that’s Materials and Methods) or where you draw conclusions based on your data (that’s in the Discussion). Describe only what you say or measured.

Number your tables sequentially (Table 1, Table 2) and independently from your other figures, such as pictures, charts, graphs (Figure 1, Figure 2). Throughout the Results and Discussion sections refer to data by table or figure number. A legend should appear beneath each table and figure describing what experiment the figure’s data represents, how the data was obtained, calculated, and presented, what the symbols and scales mean, etc. Keep legends brief; details are in the Materials and Methods section. In Microsoft Word, one can add a legend to a table or figure by right-clicking on the table or graph and selecting "Caption" from the menu.

Discussion

Here is where you describe your analysis of the data and your conclusions. Discuss what your conclusions are, how you came to your conclusions, what results form the basis of your conclusions, what possible alternative conclusions exist, how they were discounted or disproved, etc. This section also serves a second purpose: to place your findings into a context within the larger body of scientific knowledge. Relate what you have done and found to the background material you described in the Introduction. Describe why what you found is interesting, relevant, and important.

Literature Cited

In all scientific writing, the sources of your information should be cited within the text of the report. Throughout your report you should have references to other relevant scientific literature: previous work by other researchers, reviews of the field of study, and sources of experimental protocols and techniques. Each scientific journal has its own very specific format for in-text citations and bibliographies, though most are closely based on the Council of Biology Editors (CBE) bibliographic styles. I expect you to use one of the two Council of Biology Editors (CBE) styles for in-text citations and bibliographies.

·        Citation-Sequence system, where citations are numbered sequentially in their order of appearance in the text. In this format, the bibliography (list of cited references) at the end of the document is numbered in order of citation, and is thus non-alphabetical. One drawback of this format is that it is difficult to add references during editing, as you then have to renumber all subsequent references.

·        Name-Year system, where the in-text citations show the author and year of publication of the cited reference. The bibliography is listed alphabetically. This format is more forgiving during editing, as the addition of a new reference does not require any reordering of sequentially-numbered citations.

The name-year style of citations is much easier to use, particularly when you need to add or delete citations during editing. In citation-sequence style, when you decide to add a citation early in your paper, all subsequent citations have to be renumbered, and all references in the Literature Cited section have to be renumbered. In name-year style, no renumbering is necessary when citations are added.

Refer to ONLINE! A reference guide to using internet resources for help in citing web sites, e-mail, newsgroups, etc.

For guidelines on CBE formatting, see:

• http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/DocCBE.html
• http://www.lib.ohio-state.edu/guides/cbegd.html
• http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/online/cite8.html

Unfortunately, different resources on CBE styles can show some slight differences in format. You can choose either form when multiple forms are illustrated, as follows:

• Despite what the University of Wisconsin and Ohio State University web sites say about in-text citations, most science journals do not typically use "Hershberger and others, 1991". Scientific journals more typically use "Hershberger et al., 1991". Et al is Latin for "and others". Et al, like all foreign words (in vivo, in vitro, etc.), should be italicized. 
• Peoples' initials can use a comma and periods (Clinton, W.J.) or omit them (Clinton WJ).

Don't forget to cite the source of your methods. At the beginning of the Materials and Methods sections you should provide a citation for the lab manual, web site, or handouts you used as the basis for your procedure.

PAGE LAYOUT

• All lab reports should be word-processed, double spaced, in a 12-point font, with 1” margins. Section headings, and any subheadings you choose to use, should be clearly distinguishable from the text using ALL CAPS or Bold text.
• Grammar counts! Spelling counts! Punctuation counts! Ensure that your report is free of typographical errors, incorrectly structured sentences, misspelled words, missing or misused punctuation, etc. Use your word processor’s spelling and grammar checking utilities.
•  The report should indeed be neat, but avoid “overdressing” it. Do not put the report in a portfolio or binder. Simply staple the pages together, ensuring the front page clearly displays the title, author name, course information, etc.

CLARITY

Your writing should be clear and to the point. Avoid complex sentence structures. Written descriptions about scientific phenomena and experiments are difficult enough to understand, because of the abstract concepts and complex interrelationships among the components of a experiment, that you should keep your sentences and simply constructed and simply to understand as possible. Let each sentence clearly describe a single, manageable, bite-sized chunk of information, easy for the reader to digest.

Say what you mean, and mean what you say. Avoid the use of pronouns (it, they) because it is too easy to cause confusion over what the pronoun is referring to, particularly when it is used in proximity to more than one noun.

Be very careful that your nouns are correctly matched to your verbs in every sentence. For instance, plates don't grow; the colonies on them do. Agar does not contain plasmid DNA; the cells spread onto the agar were exposed to plasmid DNA. The easiest way to give your instructor the impression that you do not really understand what you are writing about is to write sentences with poor noun-verb agreement! When the nouns and verbs don't make sense together, your sentence begins to look like a jumble of jargon.

In you are talking about the biological or chemical materials in your samples, then you should use the terms "cells" or "proteins" or "samples", not "tubes" or "plates". (A plate does not grow; the bacteria streaked onto a plate grow.) Avoid describing something using the label, abbreviation or nickname you used to keep track of samples during the experiment. Describe what is happening to or how you're handling the cells, proteins, DNA molecules, genes, or chemicals. The "tube" or "plate" is not what you are experimenting on, and they're not what you are measuring or observing.

ACCURACY AND DETAIL

In your Materials and Methods section, any reference to a solution should not only describe how much volume of the solution you used in a particular step of the procedure but also its concentration. The description "10ul of DNA was added" does not allow another research to repeat your experiment unless they know what concentration of DNA was used (how many mg/ml). Make sure you know whether the volume of the solution or the mass of the solute is the important parameter.

Don't forget to include a description of how you measured or observed your samples in order to obtain the results you report. The experiment does not end with the last step in preparing your samples. It ends with your collection of data or observation of results.

OTHER NOTES ON STYLE

ITALICIZE FOREIGN WORDS AND GENUS/SPECIES NAMES: Italicize all words taken from foreign languages. This is not just a convention of technical writing, but of all writing. Just as you would italicize foreign words used in an English Composition paper - "He was overcome with schadenfreude (German: joy over someone's misfortune) when he heard the news of his rival's accident",  "His joie de vivre (French: enjoyment of life) make one enjoy his company." - you should italicize all scientific terms from foreign languages. Examples include:

• in vivo ("in the living", referring to experiments done with intact organisms or living cells)
• in vitro ("in glass", referring to experiments done in a test tube or outside of living organisms or cells)
• in utero ("in the uterus")
• de novo ("from the new", referring to something made from scratch as opposed to something that is made by modifying something else)
• grand mal (a kind of epileptic seizure)
• Genus and species names. These are of Latin origin. The first letter of the genus is always capitalized, and the species is always in lowercase: Salmonella typhimurium, Homo sapiens, Pan troglodytes. Often the genus is abbreviated: E. coli for Escherischia coli, B. subtilis for Bacillus subtilis.

USE PROPER SINGULAR AND PLURAL FORMS OF LATIN NOUNS:

• Latin neuter nouns: Bacterium is singular; bacteria is plural.
• Latin masculine nouns: Alumnus is singular; alumni is plural.
• Latin feminine nouns: Alumna is singular; alumnae is plural.

CAPITALIZATION OF CHEMICALS AND MOLECULES: The first letter of the chemical symbol of each element is capitalized (H, Ca, Fe, H2O, CaCl2) but the names of elements and chemicals are NOT capitalized (iron, calcium chloride, sucrose). The names of genes, proteins, enzymes, molecules and diseases are also NOT capitalized (beta-galactosidase, cystic fibrosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, green fluorescent protein, ribonucleic acid) though their abbreviations are capitalized (GFP, CF, ALS, RNA).

ITALICIZE GENETIC SYMBOLS, BUT NOT PROTEIN SYMBOLS: Italicize the symbols for genes or alleles (gfp, bla, BRCA1/brca1, CF/cf, ADE1/ade1) but do not italicize symbols or abbreviations referring to proteins (BRCA1, ADE1, GFP)

GREEK AND OTHER SYMBOLS: The symbol for "micro", and in microliter, is the Greek lowercase letter mu. It can be found in Microsoft Word either by typing the lowercase letter "m", then changing it to the Symbol font, or by using the Insert>Symbol... menu command and selecting the mu symbol among the characters available in the table.

NUMBERS: In the text, use numerals only for large or complicated numbers (10,300,000 cells/ml or 0.24 microliters) but use words for simple numbers (two samples, six times). Never begin a sentence with a numeral; use the textual form of the number.

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