Should I use adjacent parentheses or a semicolon (or something else)?

Question

In scientific writing it is common to use parentheses to refer to the details of statistical analyses at the end of a sentence. However, it is also common to refer to figures or tables this way. Often I find that the same sentence requires both a reference to statistical details and a figure (example below). Should I use adjacent parenthetical references or separate the statistical information from the figure reference with a semicolon?

Treatment A contained significantly greater mass than treatment B (p = 0.001)(Figure 1).

OR

Treatment A contained significantly greater mass than treatment B (p = 0.001; Figure 1).

Answer 1

Don't write pairs of parentheses back to back (don't do it)(no, really!). Either you can put on of the two items in the main text:

Treatment A contained significantly greater mass than treatment B (p = 0.001), as show on Figure 1.

or use the semicolon, as you proposed:

Treatment A contained significantly greater mass than treatment B (p = 0.001; Figure 1).

Answer 2

As this is a question about scientific writing, I suggest you consult a style manual specific to your field, or, if it's for publication, the publisher's style sheet. Different fields and different publishers may have different standard ways of dealing with this issue.

Answer 3

Perhaps you should consider using square brackets for Figure#. B (p = 0.001)[Figure 1].

Assuming, as TheRaven says, this is not dealt with by your relevant style guide.

We may not overlook the fact that some readers (manual as well as automatic) specifically look for patterns. When I am interested in statistical details alone, I would quickly look-up all occurrences that are enclosed in parentheses as the first pass.