Introduction > Writing Scientifically > The Art of Supporting Your Argument

The Art of Supporting Your Argument To ensure your work is credible, you must support any arguments or statements you make. This can be done either by referring to published literature or by thinking critically about your work. Just as your literature review should base arguments on previous research, your discussion should as well. Wherever applicable, literature should be used to support your results - who else has published the results of similar work? If your work has produced vastly different results from other researchers, what are the differences and why do you think they've occurred? If the previous work was published decades ago, changes in technology, procedure and breeding processes may be a simple solution. There may be no obvious answer, however, in which case you may need to think critically about your own work, for instance were there procedural differences? There's nothing wrong in admitting the short-comings or failings in your work, as long as you can identify where potential problems arise and how you would avoid them if you repeated your experiments. Exercise Have a look at this example of a student admitting short-comings in his work

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