Abstract draft #2

Writing clear and informative methods allows scientists to replicate experiments effectively. In the Writing in Biology course at UMass Amherst in Fall 2018, I conducted a project to observe and analyze the differences between an original multi-panel figure and a replicated version made by another student. Students in the course created multi-panel figure of a spider web on campus and wrote methods on how they captured and edited the photographs to make the finished figure. Each student switched their methods with another to try to duplicate the other student’s multi-panel figure. I found six differences between my original multi-panel figure and the replicated figure. I observed differences in the photograph of the spider web, the location of the pencil in the photo, the formatting of the figure, the text size, and the placement of the black star between the original and the replicate. Factors such as the angle of the camera, the positioning of the photographer, lighting, the type of pencil used, the interpretation of the methods, and nonspecific instructions led to the differences observed in the two multi-panel figures.