Research Writing in Dentistry

Dr J. Anthony von Fraunhofer is Professor Emeritus at the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery Dental School, University of Maryland and formerly was Professor and Director of Biomaterials Science in the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery He has an honors degree (BSc) in chemistry and an MSc and PhD in metallurgy as well as having Chartered Scientist, Chartered Chemist and Chartered Engineer designations from the Science Council of the United Kingdom. Dr von Fraunhofer also holds Fellowships in the Academy of Dental Materials, ASM International, the Institute of Corrosion and the Royal Society of Chemistry.Dr. von Fraunhofer has mentored 14 Ph.D. and over 120 M.S. degree candidates during his career and has written over 390 scientific papers, 11 books, and contributed chapters to 12 monographs on dental biomaterials and materials science. His particular fields of interest and research activity are biomechanics and the biomechanical properties of materials used in medicine and dentistry, dental cutting, suture materials, wound closure devices and wound healing; the degradation, wear and corrosion of materials in the biosystem and the corrosion and corrosion protection of metals by organic and metallic coatings. He has made over 140 presentations of his research at National and International scientific meetings and has lectured and presented courses at Universities in the United States, England, Continental Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

• Preface ixPart I Organizing, Writing, and Performing Dental Research1 Introduction 32 What Is Research? 53 Research Planning 94 Performing Research 135 How to Design a Research Study 186 Non-Bench Research 287 Sources of Error and Avoiding the “Whoops” Factor 368 Reports, Theses, Dissertations, and Scientific Papers 409 Introduction and Literature Review 4510 Methods and Materials (Experimental) 5511 Results 5712 The Discussion 6213 Conclusions 6814 The Abstract 7015 Writing Style and Technique 7316 Getting Published 76Part II Statistics and Statistical Analysis17 Basic Statistics 8318 Data and Data Distributions 8719 Averages (Measures of Central Tendency) 9120 Measures of Dispersion 9621 Probability and the Normal Curve 10022 Presentation of Data 10823 Comparing Sample Means 11524 Student’s t-Test 12225 Analysis of Variance 12926 Power Analysis 13927 Multiple Comparisons 14528 Chi-Square Test 15329 Correlation and Regression 15930 Weibull Analysis 16631 Ranking Tests 175Appendix—Further Reading 183Index 185