One of my major goals when I started ButlerSciComm was to help people write their manuscripts faster and with less stress. And the way that I did that was that I read tons of manuscripts across disciplines and I looked for what made the good ones great and what made the ones that were maybe a little bit lacking difficult to read or difficult to to understand. So what we are going to do today, I am going to take one of these manuscripts that I consider to be ideal, and I am going to break down the IDEAL DISCUSSION SECTION for you. What we're going to do - I'm going to show you where the information goes and the order it should go in and how that affects the flow of your manuscript. So, this is ButlerSciComm, I'm Kaycie Butler, and welcome to DISCUSSION BREAKDOWNS. Just a quick recap of how the breakdowns are going to work on my blog, in this post and in the future, I am going to show you a bunch of different sections of research papers, and I am going to color code them, highlight them and color code them, and show you where the information is located, why it is located in those positions and how that helps the flow and structure of your manuscript. So what we're going to do today is look at the discussion section of the manuscript. And we're going to look at that through highlighting what I consider to be an ideal discussion that I found in PNAS and look through the different highlights to see where the different parts of a discussion are located and talk about how that affects the flow of the paper. At the end, I'm going to show you some bad examples that I've made using the same discussion section. I just sort of edit it and modify it to reflect the most common mistakes I see. We're going to talk about those mistakes, how they affect the flow of the paper, how you can change it, how you can notice if you are doing them, and help improve your discussion. Because I am going to talk a lot about the scope of your discussion and the scope of your paper, I want to just do a quick recap from a previous post on what I mean about the scope of your paper.

So what I am showing here on this slide is a diagram of your paper from beginning to end and from left to right, what you see is the scope of your paper or how broad the audience is that you are addressing with the information at that section of the paper. And so at the beginning of the paper is the introduction, where you start at the broadest points necessary to capture the reader's attention and funnel them into the narrowest scope of your paper, which is going to be your research, the figures, the materials and methods, the results. And then, what we're going to focus on today is going to be the end of this diagram, where you're starting the reader at that really narrow focus of your research, and you are bringing them back out to the broadest scope possible So you are basically taking the reader on a journey from the narrowest scope that is your research and out to the really broad scope that is integrating that research into the broader scientific community. The way that we're going to talk about this part of the paper and the way we're going to talk about the scope and your discussion is by comparing the six different parts of the discussion that I talked about in a different blog post, I'll put the link below this video and we're going to show how those different parts of the discussion are related to the scope of your paper, and then where those different parts of the discussion actually fit into the discussion section of your paper to make the nicest flow and to make it the most comprehensible and have the highest impact for your reader. So to do that, first I'm going to recap those 6 key sections of a discussion and I'm going to show you where they exist on a scope diagram. So if you look at a scope diagram from the narrowest point to the ending point here I'm going to just show it widening in scope. Also, I'm going to show it darkening in color. So the lightest colors I'm going to show are going to have the narrowest scope.

The darkest colors I'm going to show are going to have the broadest scope. And so in that way, when we are looking at a discussion section, you'll be able to much more easily see the scope right on the discussion. So the first part or first key part of a discussion section and the part that is the narrowest in scope is going to be the summary of your results. This is exactly what it sounds like, this is just going to be short parts of the discussion section that summarize key results that you found in your paper. Next is going to be an analysis of those results. It is going to interpret the significance of these for your reader. Also in this point, you are going to highlight any trends that you saw, any relationships among the data, and any new knowledge that was brought up by your results. The next broadest in scope is going to be relating your results to the field. Here shows how your results fit into the field as a whole. This is where you are going to be bringing in other literature and including references The next point and the next broadest in scope is going to be relating your results to the gap in the field. This shows the current edge of knowledge - what you were trying to address with this work. After that, you are going to speculate beyond current knowledge, which is how has the field changed, what new hypotheses could be developed now that your research exists. Finally, the part with the broadest scope in the discussion is going to be the future directions. This is one that people are pretty familiar with, but it is going to talk about any future studies that can address the new hypotheses that were raised or maybe limitations to your current study. And so again, these are going to be the 6 key parts of a discussion section and what we're going to look at or what we're going to look for in the discussion sections that I show you. As a quick recap and to just show you again how these all fit together, if you consider this gray dot here in the middle to be your results and the analysis of your results, This gray dot is only one small piece of a much larger field.

And so the first thing you have to do in a discussion is take your results, analyze your results, and then show how they relate to the much greater part of the field. Where do they fit in, where in this field is your information located. The next thing you want to do is show how your results sit on the edge of that field. What edge of this field are you addressing? How are you affecting the edge of current knowledge, or how are you maybe pushing that knowledge a little bit further out. Next, you want to talk about all of the stuff outside of what is known about your field right now. What do you now know about that huge, braod expanse that sits outside of current knowledge now that your results exist. Finally, how might you be able to take where the field currently exists out into that big broad expanse of unknown? What kind of things might you now be able to do that might expand your field a little bit further? So this is really simplified look at what we are going to try to do with a discussion section, but hopefully that helps to put it a little bit into perspective. So now let's start looking at discussion sections. So I took this first discussion section from an article in PNAS I consider it to be an absolutely ideal discussion section. That's why I have chosen this one. If you want to look at it yourself, if you want to try these exercises yourself, I have this reference located on the slide, and I will also post it below with a link. If I take the discussion section and cut it out of this paper from PNAS and then color it according to this color scheme, this is what the discussion section looks like. And so just take a moment to glance at it and see if there is anything that you notice here. Initially, one of the things that is fairly obvious is that the colors don't necessarily run in order from the lightest to darkest, but the overall trend in this discussion is that the lightest colors are towards the top and the darkest colors are towards the bottom.

And so if you remember back to the hourglass slide I showed at the beginning of the with the overall view of the paper, there is a very good reason for this. Because you want to take the reader from the narrowest scope of your results and back out to the broadest scope of the field at large by the end of this paper. So it would make sense that the discussion section would run from the narrowest scope to the broadest scope. And since our colors are organized from the lightest, the narrowest scope, to the darkest, the broadest scope, it makes sense that the colors would run with the lightest color towards the top of this and to the darkest color at the bottom. The next thing to notice with the discussion section is that there are, if you look on the left side there are very different paragraphs within this discussion section, and they look very different based on color. Now, I have grouped these based on what I consider to be the 3 different types of paragraph in your discussion and you will see them in the brackets on the left side of the screen. The first chunk is going to be the blue bracket at the top, and that is going to be your first paragraph. You can see in this chunk that that first paragraph consists mostly of that gray color with a little bit of what I will tell you is color #4, the gap in the field. So this first paragraph includes a summary of your results and it relates it to the gap in the field. Also, this paragraph comes first for a very important reason. When the reader gets to this part of your discussion section, they have just come from the narrowest scope of your discussion And so what this does is it summarizes that narrowest scope and relates it to that gap in the field, so it starts broadening the reader's horizons a little bit, reminding them of that previous work and reminding them of why it is important.

Now, the next type of paragraph you see in the discussion are the two paragraphs in the middle that I have highlighted in green brackets. Both of these paragraphs look roughly similar to each other and what they are is the meat of your discussion section. These are the paragraphs where each one of these took a key result of the paper, analyzed it for the reader, and then expanded through those different parts of a discussion that were applicable to this key result. For each one of these paragraphs, you see it starts at the lightest colors because each paragraph is starting at a critical analysis of an important result, relating that to the field, relating that to the gap in the field, speculating beyond current knowledge where possible, and then providing future directions, also where possible. Now, for each one of these key paragraphs, you might not have every one the 6 colors from your paper, and that is perfectly okay. Just when you have these middle paragraphs, try to have as many of those colors as possible and try to trend them in that order from lightest to darkest because what you want in this discussion is to BUILD on your work and move out from there. So you should start at lighter colors so you build out. I'll talk a little bit about problems that may arise here in the problem section of this video. So, the third type of paragraph then you find in the discussion is going to be this last paragraph, the one bracketed in orange. If you look here, you'll see that the major colors in this paragraph are the 3 darkest colors in our color scheme, and that because you are at the furthest out point of the paper, and you want to have the broadest scope possible at this point. So what this paragraph is doing is taking your research that you just discussed for the reader and it is essentially showing the importance of your work by showing how your work fits in to the field, how it is changing the field, and how it is going to be important for future research - why scientists and non-scientists should be excited about this work.

So this paragraph bracketed in orange is the conclusion paragraph It is written in this paper how I consider a perfect conclusion, which is these three darkest colors of the discussion section. The next thing to notice about the discussion section is that other than that first paragraph of the discussion, there is very little of the summary of results. So your reader already read the results section of your paper - they don't need you to summarize everything for them. So after the beginning of your discussion where you summarize the key points and relate them to the gap in the field, after that you should only use the summary of results in very specific locations to remind the reader of something you need to know before you move on to discuss it. So if you look at this sentence that I have highlighted here, they only use half a sentence, saying "while we did not observe any acute toxicity... in our mouse experiments," and then they move on to talk about future studies that follow up on this. So now I'm going to walk through a couple of different problems that I see in discussion sections. Though because I don't like using bad examples, what I've done is taken this ideal example that I've been showing you, and I have modified it to reflect the three biggest problems I see in discussion sections. So while I've done this, you're going to be able to see what these problems look like when they are colored in this fashion, and hopefully that can help you spot them in your papers, if you are making the same mistakes. Mistake #1: see if you can spot the problem If you notice the major difference from the previous discussion sections I've shown you is this big chunk of the 3rd color at the beginning of the discussion. And so what that is is a chunk of discussing the field right at the beginning of the discussion section. This is pretty common, actually, this chunk of introduction at the beginning of your discussion.

But you don't need to bring up new information in the discussion, in fact you really SHOULDN'T bring up new information So anything here like this, any big chunks of the field should be integrated somehow into the introduction of your paper. Alternatively, you can bring up information when you are relating your results out to the field. So the other option is to just take this chunk of field and disperse it throughout the rest of your introduction always following some of the lighter colors. You can put some of the information about the field in your discussion, but make it related to your results - don't just make it a big block of this 3rd color of text somewhere in your discussion, which derails and detracts from your results. Everything in this discussion is based on your results and building from your results so try to avoid these big blocks of text on the field that are not stemming from your results. So the next major problem I see, see if you guys notice it... This one is a little bit obvious, but what you want to look at here is essentially that the first paragraph of the discussion, the introduction to the discussion, has been moved to the conclusion position. And so this is one of the biggest mistakes I see in paper writing in general. The conclusion consists of essentially a summary of the results. And so now knowing what you do about the scope of your paper and how that affects the flow of your paper and how that indicates to the reader the importance of your work, you can see now how changing the discussion to look like this and changing the conclusion to look like this completely changes the flow of the paper. So this is one of my biggest no-nos - I really don't like to see it. Instead, put the summary paragraph at the beginning of your discussion as an introduction to the discussion. Leave that final paragraph as the forward-thinking paragraph that shows the reader how your work is really integrating in the field, how it is changing the field, and its importance to science.

So the 3rd biggest mistake I see in the discussion is a little bit subtler but I'll give you a minute to see if you can figure it out. So what I did here was actually take out a lot of the darker colors from these middle paragraphs of the discussion. And it is actually a pretty common mistake that I see that the discussion just doesn't include enough discussion so that is why I like to have this color scheme - so it becomes much more obvious to people immediately when they are lacking something in their discussion. When you have your discussion, if you color code your discussion, you should see all 6 of these colors in your discussion, and you should see a decent amount of all of them in there. So again, you are not going to be able to put all 6 colors about every single point in your discussion, but whenever possible, add more discussion I have rarely ever looked at somebody's paper and said "you have way too... ...much discussion." The only times I might say that is if they had big blocks of that "field" text that could be introduction or could be just be cut from the paper. But when the discussion is stemming directly from your results, so when it is starting from at these lighter colors and building into the darker colors, I've never told somebody that they had too much discussion. So when in doubt, add more discussion. If you want to know how much discussion to add, try coloring your discussion like this and seeing what colors are lacking. Then brainstorming how you can fit that information into your paper. Okay, so if you want to do this yourself, if you want to try this exercise yourself, I have one last tip for you. That is basically to not use the highlight button. So the highlight button gives you a very fixed range of colors, as you can see here, and you can't show that scope building from this. So instead of looking at the highlight button, look for this button here the shade button, and what that will do when you click on it is give you a range of theme colors.

So this is exactly what I did for coloring the discussion I started at the lightest color for the lightest scope and moved up from there. So what I recommend now is trying this exercise on your discussion and seeing what your discussion looks like. Now that you have the color and visual in front of you, can you modify this in some way to change the flow of your paper and see how it changes the flow of your paper. Do you notice an altered order of the colors in your paper? How does that affect your paper? And what are you already doing that you didn't even realize you were doing? And that is what the discussion section of your research manuscript should look like. So, thanks for joining us on this discussion breakdown. As always, you can ask me any questions in the comments or send me a message If there is something you would like to see next, let me know! Until next time...