1. A computer-implemented method for processing experimental data in a laboratory data management system according to an object model, the object model including a first pre-defined experiment class that can be instantiated to define one or more experiment objects that represent data for particular experiments in the laboratory data management system, the method comprising: receiving input specifying a first set of one or more variable definitions defining a set of variables for a first experiment type to be represented by one or more instances of the first pre-defined experiment class, the variables in the set of variables having types selected from a predefined set of data types that can be used to represent data for experiments in the laboratory data management system; receiving data for an experiment of the first experiment type, the data including a plurality of values corresponding to variables defined in the first set of variable definitions; storing a first representation of the data for the experiment of the first experiment type in a format defined according to the set of variable types; and presenting a second representation of the data for the experiment of the first experiment type, the second representation being derived from the first representation and being presented in a format defined according to the first set of variable definitions.