"Results showed"

[IamAporcupine]

Why do I feel that I read somewhere that this is wrong?

My memory is horrendous (see other thread ) so it could well be that I read that it was a different sentence and that 'results showed' was the correct way of saying it

Can someone set me straight?

It's passive language but I tend to use a lot of it in papers as well.

It's not passive voice (that would be "it was shown that...", "the effect was shown by ...", etc.) but it is often clunky because it tends to be tautological / redundant in the context of its sentence, which invariably describes results (so there's no need to say that results showed results, iyswim).

For instance, "Results showed that x affected y" could be rephrased simply as "X affected y". Or "Results showed an unexpected effect of z" could be rephrased as "There was an unexpected effect of z" or even "An unexpected effect of z emerged".

I use it myself but try not to.

It should be “results show” (present tense) as they still show whatever they show. It’s not something that only happens in the past.

Ooh, controversial!

I tend towards past tense for experiment (when reporting the method and analyses we have completed) and present tense for discussion (when arguing that we now know a small piece of reality works like this).

@geekaMaxima - yesssss, that was it!
Thanks!

(and I agree re. the use of past for for methods/results, and present for discussion)