The function of the discussion section in academic medical writing

There is growing interest in the dissemination of research results and concern for how important messages can be most efficiently disseminated. A recent editorial on the writing of discussion sections and the problems connected with this provided a timely contribution.1 The particular problem Docherty and Smith perceive is that authors use “rhetoric” to make claims about their findings which “go beyond the data.” The function of the discussion section is seen as simply a way to “sell the paper” and as such it is “the weakest part of the paper … careful explanation gives way to polemic.” The suggested solution is that contributors should be asked to write highly structured discussion sections as a way of imposing discipline and banishing speculation. The argument in favour of doing so is “[m]uch the same as that for structured abstracts,” which “have been shown to include more important information than unstructured summaries.”

In this article, we highlight several difficulties with this line of argument. We argue that discussion sections already have a fairly conventionalised structure; that some speculative language in the discussion section is desirable; and that, even if speculative language were not desirable, it would be impossible to get rid of it by virtue of a tighter structure.