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Essential Guide to Writing a Scientific Laboratory Report

This tutorial provides a comprehensive overview of how to effectively write a laboratory report, modeled after a scientific paper. Key sections include the title, abstract, introduction, methods and materials, results, discussion, and acknowledgments. Emphasizing the importance of proper formatting and categorization, it guides you in crafting each part for clarity and scientific rigor. The document also stresses the importance of presenting results descriptively and without interpretation in the results section. Utilize real examples for reference and improve your research communication skills.

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Essential Guide to Writing a Scientific Laboratory Report

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  1. Preparing a Laboratory Report RF Lauff, M.Sc. Part-time Faculty and Senior Laboratory Instructor Biology Department St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, NS

  2. Overview A laboratory report should be written as if you were writing a real scientific paper. Therefore, it may be very convenient for you to have a real scientific paper beside you for reference as you write. This tutorial will use the above research paper as an example of a properly formatted work. Bear in mind that formatting styles vary for different journals, and likewise, for different courses.

  3. Title – etc. • brief • phenomenon (phenomena) being described • animal(s) involved • authorship • ID number, course, date Please don’t use a separate page for this!

  4. The Abstract The major technique(s) are briefly mentioned The results are itemized This section starts off with one phrase or sentence describing the goal of the paper The conclusions are drawn Only rarely are citations made here. You likely won’t encounter this. Likewise, statistics are not normally mentioned here.

  5. investigated Major technique Goal Results Concluding Remarks

  6. Introduction Synopsis of known information LOTS of citations! Never refer to the results of your experiment in this section!

  7. Introduction, continued Given all that you’ve just described, tell the reader what your experiment is about!

  8. Methods and Materials categorize! cite equations

  9. categorize! cite

  10. Methods and Materials, continued

  11. Results Keep categorizing! FIGURES TEXT

  12. Results, continued • almost robotic description of the figures and tables • but NO interpretation • i.e. no physiological explanations • the text should be descriptive enough to provide a mental picture of the graph • i.e. given just the text, the reader should be able to draw a decent representation of the graph

  13. Results, continued Tutorials on graphing and creating a table are available as links from the lab’s webpage: http://www.stfx.ca/people/rlauff/304/304.html. Do NOT rely on software defaults to create effective graphs!

  14. no background colour no line colours no borders font too small

  15. The Discussion • categorize! • this is where you explain the physiology!

  16. Acknowledgements • thank the people who helped you out.

  17. The point of a lab report is to…communicate your research! http://www.stfx.ca/people/rlauff/teaching/write.html

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