1. Exercise #4: Cell Biology Research Paper
Wrapping up

2. Hypothesis & Significance
Redundant elements are found in several sections of a research article
The hypothesis & significance can usually be found in the abstract, introduction and discussion

3. Introduction: 3 Key Points
General Background:
How is the work in this paper related to the work in this field?
What did the researchers have to go on when they started the work?
Significance: Why was it important to do this study?
What was their goal or hypothesis?
In other words, what did they plan and then do?

4. Discussion: 3 Key Points
The discussion basically starts where the Introduction left off…
What did they do or accomplish?
How does this study relate to what others have done?
Confirm, conflict, expand what was done by others?
Significance:
Connect why this study was important to do and what was important about their results?
Since this was so important, where do they go from here?

5. Support or Refute the Hypothesis?
Each experiment either confirmed the hypothesis or did not conflict. Why is that, since the goal in science is to refute hypotheses, not prove them. Does every experiment work to support your hypothesis if you are a ‘good’ researcher? No.
Often a scientist will collect data that conflicts with their hypothesis. Sometimes this ‘conflict’ is in the form of a lack of an observed response. This is sometimes also referred to as ‘negative data’ because a ‘positive response’ was not observed.
Conflicting or negative data is less easy to publish because of the questions raised, e.g. was there a technical problem explaining the results? You more often see conflicts reported in a poster presentation because researchers can get feedback from other scientists as they work to build a story they can publish. A definitive answer to a question is always much easier to publish. If a paper contains a lot of negative data, too many questions may be raised about possible technical issues and the paper rejected. Remember, these ‘conflicts’ often arise in good science, but you typically do not get to see this part of the scientific process in most of the literature except in the discussion where conflict in results between labs is actually not only acceptable, but must be addressed if it exists.
Because of the difficulty in publishing negative data (which may actually be important… think about why), there are now some journals that focus on publishing negative data.