In this video, we’re going to talk about
the language used in the Discussion section.
Remember the Discussion is the last section
of the research paper.
In the Discussion you are reviewing the results
of your experiment,
and writing about your ideas for possible
explanations,
and comparing these with previous research.
Some of these things are facts--that is, we
know that they are true,
and some of these are your opinions, ideas,
and suggestions.
The language you use shows the readers your
level of confidence with the information.
You might remember that in the Introduction
videos,
we said that everything you write needs proof,
so we can believe you.
You can use citations, or a clear logical
argument, or the measurements from your own
experiment to provide the evidence.
In the Discussion, you will do these same
things,
but you will also use words that show that
you recognize that some of the things you
say can’t be proven.
In fact, you will often discuss opposite possibilities,
so there can’t be proof.
But the reader needs to understand clearly
what you know and what is just your suggestion.
The Discussion section often uses these two
tenses, and in a similar way to the Introduction
and the Results sections.
Present tense is generally used when reporting
the findings of the research,
but past tense is used for the details of
the experiment.
You can think of this as: the “showing”
is happening right now in the paper,
but the “underestimating” occurred when
they actually did the experiment.
In this example, past tense is used when talking
about what someone else did in their paper:
these guys “suggested” this.
But present tense is used for the general
result of their study, which is a truth now:
“arousing music reduces the attentional
space available”.
Next, when we write our opinions or ideas
or other things that we can’t be 100% certain
are true,
we use hedging to make our confidence level
clear.
This first sentence uses the word “proved”
which implies that this is 100% true and accepted.
The second sentence uses “suggested” instead
to show that this has not yet been accepted
as 100% true.
Here are some techniques we can use for hedging.
Let’s look for these in the paper about
music and behavior 
of gorillas.
OK, so here's the Discussion section.
If you remember from here, they had no significant results.
so they can't say "shows", they can only say "suggests" or may be influenced.
Now these are the facts of their study.
There definitely was a trend, but not a statistically significant trend.
This is the paragraph where they discuss surprising results.
We're using "appeared" because again, we don't actually know that it was beneficial.
 we just have some evidence to point toward that.
And then here's some backup for that.
And they have some citations here.
This is still a topic that is open to debate.
And that's it, thanks for watching and remember that if you want more examples of hedging or using these tenses
look at actual research papers and look at the discussion sections.
That's the best way to learn.
