Effective writing and publishing scientific papers, part IV: methods

If you consider a research study as a delicate dish of knowledge, a paper's methods section would be like a recipe that lists all the necessary ingredients of the study and how they need to be combined during cooking. Ideally, it allows the dish to be prepared again with the same result. The methods section ties the introduction to the results section to create a clear story line; it should present the obvious approach to answer the research question and define the structure in which the results will be presented later.