Let's Discuss It: Tips for Authors: The Basic Outline of a Scientific Paper, Part 4: Discussion

This is the most intricate of the sections. This is where your results are compared and contrasted with those that came before. It is a retrospective of both what has already been published by others and what has just been presented in the paper. The section basically answers the question: what do the data mean? That is, what conclusions can be drawn from them in the aggregate and in the context of previous work. By putting the new results within the context of what has gone before in a particular research area, the entire field is moved forward. So how do you go about making a case for the conclusions you drew from the data?

To do this, let’s step back just a bit. Many scientists think in terms of ‘story’ when writing up a research project. That is, your writing tells the reader the story of a how the data led you on a journey from one position or way of thinking to a new position or way of thinking about the scientific issue at hand. So how do the previous sections, Introduction, Methods and Results, fit into the journey idea? The Introduction gives the reasons you started the journey--the controversies, problems or gaps in knowledge that prompted the research—as well as the predicted destination of the journey, the hypothesis. The Methods section is essentially the mode of transportation; they are the means by which you generated the data needed to move you and the reader along the way to the destination. The Results demonstrate that you are indeed traveling to new territory; they are the new (in)sights that you discovered as you traveled this new path towards what you expected to be your predicted destination. However, you can only describe those sights, since the journey is not yet complete. It is only when you reach your destination, either the predicted one or an unexpected one, can you look back and find the meaning of the entire journey and the new destination. That is what the Discussion does. It is that looking back at the journey and showing the readers the new sights you found along the way that justify the destination—conclusion—that you reached.

I hope the story scenario was helpful as an organizing principle to the paper in general, but also as a starting place for the Discussion. But what more practical pieces of advice can I give you?

1. The most basic actually came before even considering the Discussion section. In the very first blog/facebook article on Results (“Results - What Results?”; Facebook, Tips for Authors #1, posted February 22, 2020), I wrote: “The results section need to be organized such that each point made lays the logical foundation for the next point to be made, thereby building the case for the overall conclusion to be drawn from the research.” The organization of the Results is really the underlying logical organization of the paper and the creates the order for both the Methods, which I mentioned in that section, and the order of the topics for the Discussion section as well.

2. The Discussion is really putting the points you illustrated in the Results section into the context of what was previously found. That is done by a series of comparisons and contrasts. You bring in other studies that support your point, emphasizing why they do. You also look at studies that may be in opposition to your point, and then explain why they are either wrong or not really in opposition.

3. When you have done the comparison and contrasts for each point made in the Results, then you can state your overall conclusion and put that into context, again through the same comparison-contrast process.

4. The final paragraph of the Discussion is usually about the implications for the near and long term.

5. When you use the same order as was developed in the Results section, your readers are already primed to the logic underlying the entire project and more receptive to following your lead through the Discussion to your conclusion.

Other Considerations:

1. For studies that are fundamentally about new processes or new relationships, it is helpful to have a summary diagram of that process/relationship, either as the last figure in the Results section or within the Discussion section. It can be used as a guide in the Discussion section to keep the reader following along.

2. The Discussion section should be the most heavily laden with citations. Every assertion you make has to be backed up either by the data in the paper or by one or more published works. An assertion is when you say something like, “X was always found with Y” or “Protein kinases have been shown to be….” The reader has the right, and really the duty, to question whether an assertion is justified. Justification in scientific research comes from data that has been vetted through publication or data in the process of being vetted, i.e the work you are presenting in the paper.

3. Keep the Discussion directly focused on what you found. Do not go off on related topics if you did not generate data on those topics!

4. Be careful not to do “mind dumps.” The reader is not interested in knowing everything you know about an area, and irrelevant information just obscures the work you are presenting.