Felician University Library: Biology: Evidence in Biology

Evidence in Biology

Once you understand the writing of professional biologists, it’s easy to see how these practices are reflected in the writing you’ll do for your courses.

Scientific writing in biology incorporates peer-reviewed literature to justify the need for the study (Introduction), refers to methodology (Methods), or places the work in a comparative or broader context (Discussion).

In their introductions, biologists may include other mainstream sources, but these sources do not replace peer-reviewed ones.

Peer-reviewed literature comes in two forms: primary or secondary. For the results sections, information about the data provides the evidence for any speculation included in the discussion. You might think about the evidence used in biology writing as consisting of four categories: primary sources, secondary sources, mainstream sources, and data.

Primary vs. Secondary Sources

Primary sources allow researchers to get as close as possible to original ideas, events, and empirical research as possible.

Creative works, firsthand or contemporary accounts of events, and the publication of the results of empirical observations or research. Diaries, interviews, speeches, photographs, etc.

Secondary sources analyze, review, or summarize information in primary resources or other secondary resources.

Even sources presenting facts or descriptions about events are secondary unless they are based on direct participation or observation. Biographies, journal articles, books, and dissertations.

Tertiary sources provide overviews of topics by synthesizing information gathered from other resources. Tertiary resources often provide data in a convenient form or provide information with context by which to interpret it.

These are often grouped together with secondary sources. They include encyclopedias and dictionaries. Textbooks are tertiary sources, NOT PRIMARY.

Primary vs. Secondary Sources in the Sciences

Primary Source vs Secondary Sources in the Sciences

In the Sciences, primary sources are documents that provide full description of the original research. For example, a primary source would be a journal article where scientists describe their research on the human immune systems. A secondary source would be an article commenting on or analyzing the scientists' research on the human immune system.

	Primary Source	Secondary Source
Definitions	Original materials or original research that has not been filtered through interpretation or evaluation by a second party.	Sources that contain commentary on or a discussion about a primary source.
Timing of Publication Cycle	Primary sources tend to come first in the publication cycle.	Secondary sources tend to come second in the publication cycle.
Formats - depends on the kind of analysis being conducted.	Conference papers, dissertations, interviews, lab notebooks, patents, a study reported in a journal article, a survey reported in a journal article, and technical reports.	Review articles, magazine articles, and books.
Example: Scientists studying Genetically Modified Foods.	Article in a scholarly journal reporting research and methodology.	Articles analyzing and commenting on the results of original research; books and websites doing the same.

Understanding Primary & Secondary Sources [video]

Identifying Original Research

Identifying Original Research

Original research articles often have very identifiable components. These will include some or all of the following components:

Abstract - summarizes the research article
Materials & Methods - describes the research procedure
Title - briefly states what the article is about
Figures - diagrams, pictures, or photograph illustrating material from the text or research data
References - an extensive list of studies discovered while reviewing the literature for this experiment and writing the paper
Author - identifies who wrote the paper and any important affiliations like university or institutions
Acknowledgements - acknowledges and thanks people or institutions that were instrumental in the research
Discussion - interpretation of the results, explaining and comparing them to results of other experiments
Tables - a set of data arranged in rows and columns

Review articles are often as lengthy or even longer than original research articles. What the authors of review articles are doing is analyzing and evaluating current research and investigations related to a specific topic, field, or problem. They are not primary sources since they review previously published material. They can be of great value for identifying potentially good primary sources, but they aren't primary themselves.

Biology: Evidence in Biology