I am looking ahead to the abstract/poster, because I want to know what happens if our research never gets the question answered. What if we find a lot about what does not work, and not a lot about what does answer the question? I mean, I know that trouble-shooting problems in research is part of good science, but is that ok to talk about on our poster? It is possible (not ideal) that we might spend the whole 6 weeks and not advance as much as we hoped, and not have an answer for our original question. I just wanted to make sure that it is ok to make our poster highlight the “work in progress” toward a question and not have to be a fully answered question. And, therefore, since our abstract is due ahead before we know if we have any results, it may be “misleading” to what we eventually find, but we will make it match as best we can. Does this sound right?
So I am also not going to have any data. What I am planning on doing is focusing on the procedures we conducted and then showing an example of what the data should look like and then going on with how things could be tweaked to get results in the future and the future application of the research.
I think that would be a cool poster…. Share with other researchers which processes or procedures they should not follow or do is just as important. Providing that information to others is very useful. Especially since you said your lab has tried to replicate a procedure someone else wrote up as a baseline. It makes you reflect…is it us completing the process or is their data or proposed method not as accurate as they are writing them up to be.
Also that makes me think of a lesson idea for students.
Remember just because you are not finding what you want does not mean you are not finding something important.