Page 176 - English for Writing Research Papers

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9.3 There will always be uncertainty in your results, don't
try to hide it
The British Medical Journal (BMJ) has an extremely useful author resources sec-
tion on its website. These resources are not only useful for those undertaking medi-
cal research, but can be applied to any kind of research writing. I strongly recommend
accessing their site: http://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/resources-authors/article-
types/research

The following extract is from the BMJ site:

Please do not use the term "negative" to describe studies that have not found statistically
significant differences, perhaps because they were too small. There will always be some

uncertainty, and we hope you will be as explicit as possible in reporting what you have
found in your study. Using wording such as "our results are compatible with a decrease of
this much or an increase of this much" or “this study found no effect” is more accurate and
helpful to readers than “there was no effect/no difference”.

9.4 Be constructive in how you present your limitations

When you discuss any limitations and failures, try to do so in a constructive way so
that other researchers can learn from your experiences.

However, you don't want to present your limitations in a negative light. Your results
may be 'negative' for you, but for the scientific community they are not negative,

rather they are helpful indicators essential for the progress of knowledge ( 9.2 ).

This means that although the results themselves may have been unexpected or
appear disappointing to you, the actual way you present them should not be formu-
lated in negative language as this might produce a negative reaction in your readers.
The idea is to report everything in a neutral, subjective way.

S1. *The limitation of this paper is that the two surveys were unfortunately not conducted in
the same period. This will affect our results in terms of …

S1 is extremely honest, but could be expressed in a way that sounds less negative,
as in S2:
S2. Although the two surveys were not conducted in the same period, this will only affect our
results in terms of …