Howdy,

I'm facing a bit of a strange situation. We determined the value for a parameter experimentally about 3 months ago. The value we determined works well. Just the other day, I found a reference that gives a theoretical basis for why that value works. This is pretty handy since the experiments are no longer the only source of justification for that value.

However, when writing this up, it might look a bit weird to say "we figured it out experimentally, but then found a reference that backs us up". To me that would seem like we just arbitrarily guessed but then happened to guess right.

How would I go about discussing this? The theory and the experiment are very close, but not exact, but it's still weird :-P

Ha ha, but did you arbitrarily guess? As long as yu have stated what the basis for your original hypothesis was and that this theory adds to that justification it should be ok. Maybe you could say something like. Based on so and so (whatever your lit review says) I hypothesissed that conducting experiment 'X' would yield parameter value 'Y', which can also be explained by theory 'Z' and say how the theory explains why your experiement was right. I don't think you need to say it was a happy accident that you came across the theory after the experiment but it will be important to stress your experiement was original and based on your hypothesis and whilst theory helps explain the values you got, they are not totally the same, therefore your findings contribute knew knowedge in a different way. Although I would expect that you will need to link the theory back in your literature review and cite it there also as I think it is frowned upon to refer to literature in the data and conclusion that you hadn't already covered in the lit review? Well that's advice i've been given. Thank heavens for happy accidents :-)

Hm, you're right. It wasn't an arbitrary guess, but I had no idea that there was a useful theory that would have helped :-P I like your explanation: the experiment was original and based on a hypothesis, but the theory helps explain it.

Thanks!