The Scientific Research Report
What you must understand
A report communicates the study so that others could evaluate and replicate it. The conventional structure - introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusion, references - is a reasoning sequence, not a formality. The introduction moves from broad context to the specific gap and states the aim and hypothesis. The methods section must be detailed enough for replication: materials, participants, procedures, controls and analysis. Results report findings without interpretation, using appropriately labelled tables and figures with units, and reporting variability as well as central tendency. The discussion interprets results against the hypothesis and literature, addresses limitations and suggests future work. Conclusions must not exceed the data. Referencing must be consistent and accurate, and scientific writing should be precise, concise, objective and in appropriate tense - past tense for what was done, present for established knowledge.
Traps in questions
Expect questions where interpretation creeps into results, where a figure lacks units or axis labels, where the discussion ignores contradictory literature, or where the conclusion claims more than the design supports. Watch for plagiarism issues including inadequate paraphrasing and missing citations, and for tense inconsistency. A frequent trap is a methods section missing a crucial detail - temperature, concentration, sample size - that would prevent replication. Also check that graphs suit the data type and that error bars are defined.
Rule of thumb
Write each section answering its own question: Why this study? (intro) How was it done? (methods) What was found? (results) What does it mean, and how far can it be trusted? (discussion). If a sentence answers a different section's question, move it.