Annotated example breaks down what each paragraph of a great paper's discussion section should do
Faheem_uh · x · 2026-10-24
A useful reference for PhD students: the author shares the discussion section of Faith et al., Science Translational Medicine (2014), annotated paragraph-by-paragraph to show its structure.
- Opens with a one-paragraph big summary statement of the study's most important contribution (far more effector strains modulate Tregs than appreciated)
- Then frames findings as an extension of prior work (e.g., Atarashi et al.), explaining how results build on existing literature
- Explains the engineering/platform contribution: a high-throughput way to identify microbe–host interactions that accelerates future research
- Situates the work field-wide, noting the shift from hypothesis-driven to observational experiments in microbiome research
- Closes with forward-looking statements about questions the platform leaves unanswered
Each annotation explains how that paragraph facilitates scientific research — a concrete template for structuring your own discussion section.
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