Lab 7

Objective of Lab 7: Interpretation of the Research Results

You should now understand how and why the work described in your article was done, and what were the results of the experiments performed by the researchers. Next, you'll determine whether the researchers' goals were met and how they interpreted their contribution to human knowledge. You'll find this information in the Discussion/Conclusions section of your research article and the cited references.

Questions to Consider

Summarize the authors' interpretation of their work by answering the following list of 4 questions:

  1. Did the authors succeed in answering the question (testing the hypothesis) that they had posed (and that you stated in Report 1)?
  2. Did this research provide new factual information, a new understanding of a microbiological phenomenon and/or a new research technique? If so, what were they?
  3. How did the authors describe the significance of their work? Do you agree with their estimation?
  4. Did your authors think that their results supported or refuted work by other researchers?

Assignment:

  1. Study the authors' interpretation of their research by examining the Discussion/Conclusions Section of your research article and any other papers cited in that section.
  2. Use the above 4 (red) questions as a guide to make sure that you have fully analyzed the authors' interpretation.
  3. Summarize your answers to these questions for Report 2.