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Some major differences and the differences they make:

Scientists privilege the results and timeliness of research, so they do not use the researcher's first name and they include the date of the research.

This privileging of results might also explain the use of the passive voice (the object studied becomes the subject of the sentence; the agent performing the research appears in the object position or not at all). The passive voice allows for the appearance of "objective" reporting of phenomena.

Humanists privilege humans: thus the use of the researcher's full name. They also ascribe (although this has been changing) to the idea of research as timeless, for all time: what Milton thought means the same thing to Americans today that it meant to Milton's English audience 1665 . This might explain the use of the present tense to describe what Williams "wrote" (he "writes") years ago. In MLA we refer to what Williams wrote 21 years ago as if he had only just written it (present tense) and as if in the last 21 years he couldn't possibly have changed his mind or reinterpreted what he observed. That might not be fair, and it might contribute to publication anxiety (fear of publishing) in the humanitites. How many of us want to be judged today based on what we thought, did, and wrote even just 5 years ago? Would you want statements you made in the past critiqued as if you only just now uttered them?

Likewise, note the use of the past tense in the APA sample. Because the date of the research is important to how that research is perceived, writers in APA don't approve of using the present tense to discuss past discoveries.

Look at how the language choices reflect the values of each community and their motivations for research. The APA sample suggests that additional research will be needed to "validate" what Williams discovered, to prove it beyond a doubt, while the MLA sample suggests we do research to "expand" upon earlier studies, to elaborate or apply one discovery to another context. There seems to be a difference in the goals of research and writing here, right? One community is looking for proof for theories and the other is using theories to expand knowledge. Although we can't sat that this is an absolute distinction: both communities value (and require) proof and support for theories and both are interested in expanding the knowledge base.

Sometimes people in the humanities give APA people a hard time (and vice versa). While the use of passive voice would seem to suggest that scientists merely observe phenomena and have no hand in creating the phenomena ("subjects were asked" rather than "we asked subjects"), by removing the scientist-as-writer from the subject position, other scientists can question, attack, and disprove an experiment without attacking the colleague who conducted that experiment.

For a really nice side by side list of the differences, go here.