Writing and Publishing Scientific Articles
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yours was better and give reasons to support this. Also, avoid all-or- nothing statements about the reasons for the discrepancy or the validity of the other study’s findings. Phrase your explanations as suggestions, or assume that the discrepancy could be due to more than 1 factor.
Consider the following example:
Not useful (study merely named): We found that drug B was not effective. Smith et al. 1 also studied drug B.
Not useful (discrepancies not stated): We found that drug B was not effective. In the study of Smith et al., 1 15 of 40 patients responded to drug B. Negative ton e (focuses on other study’s shortcoming): Unlike our study, a previous trial showed that drug B was effective. 1 However, the patient selection criteria used in that trial were unrealistic. Failure of the previous trial to include patients with advanced disease probably accounts for the positive findings of that trial. Positive tone (focuses on present study’s strength): Unlike our study, a previous trial showed that drug B was effective. 1 However, unlike the previous trial, our study group included a high proportion of patients with advanced disease. This difference in patient groups may account for the different results. It is also important to distinguish your work from corroborating studies. A string of sentences about similar studies with similar results can raise doubts about whether your study is novel. You should therefore point out how the previous studies differed from yours (for example, a different patient population or different cell line). You also may discover that the gap in knowledge, as stated in the Introduction, should be refined to emphasize the differences between your study and those that preceded it.
Describing Others’ Findings
Describing other researchers’ findings in your own words is an important part of explaining your study’s rela tionship to other studies. Occasionally, a direct quotation is appropriate, because you wish to reuse a short phrase that is particularly apt and memorable or because repeating the exact words of a recognized authority gives those words extra weight. Most of the time, however, you will be paraphrasing or summarizing.
Paraphrasing means rewriting, or “translating,” the written text from another source into your own words without changing the original
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