The point of research is to increase and build on the knowledge in a specific area of interest, but how can we generate new knowledge if we don’t discuss existing bodies of knowledge? This is especially important as your research must be in the context of everything else done in the field. When we write our discussions, we write a section where we compare results to similar studies done in that past. This can be a short as one or two sentences, but it is usually written in tabular form as what Le’s students did below:
In their study, the researchers presented the predicted values of anti-leukemia properties of chemicals. One of the panelists asked the researchers if these values are comparable to anti-leukemia drugs in the market. As another example, Le’s research below specifically added reference data from varied sources as a point of comparison.
Remember
Always contextualize your data to existing bodies of knowledge.
When possible, collate your current study along with datapoints from existing literature in tabular form.
Tanim Talino 