This is where you have the opportunity to interpret your results and determine what they mean within the broader biological context you referenced in the introduction.  This section serves to ‘book end’ your introduction, and should move from your specific findings to the general.

• Start by stating your primary findings.
• Assess whether your hypotheses were supported or not.
• Interpret your results in light of what was already known about the subject of the investigation, referencing the primary literature.
  • Address each aspect of the study, following the same order you used in the results.
• Offer a concise critique of your own study, indicating limitations to your findings and possible reasons for divergence from previous studies.
• Describe how your results relate to the bigger picture (broader scale topic from introduction), why they are important, and what they contribute.
• Draw general conclusions and make suggestions about future experiments that should be conducted.  Be thoughtful about this aspect.  How can you build on what you found to ask new questions?

 

**Note that each discipline within biology may have specific stylistic approaches to paper sections.  See Prof. Trapaini’s site for information on writing in neuroscience.