Interlude: Discussion Elements, Retraction Trends, and Better Conversations
Every time I sit down to write this newsletter, I'm grateful for you. Every week, you share you valuable time and attention with me. What an incredible gift!
As we approach the end of the year, I'm thinking about ways that I can better serve you in 2026. And I'd love your input.
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Thank you so much for your help. I appreciate you.
Now onto this week's round-up...
💌 Round-up
💻 From My Desk
A Simple Framework for a Strong Discussion Section
Do you struggle with writing the Discussion section of your manuscripts? In this video, I share a clear, flexible framework for writing the Discussion section, so you can move from feeling stuck to confidently articulating your findings, their implications, and their impact on your field.
👓 Reading
Guidelines and checklists for writing guidelines and checklists: lessons from evidence-based medicine
"Guidelines and checklists are widely used to augment memory, improve quality and consistency, ensure thoroughness and efficiency, structure repetitive tasks, and to reduce errors, omissions, ambiguities, and misunderstandings. These characteristics make them ideal for reporting the designs, activities, and results of medical research. In fact, EBM [evidence-based medicine] is built around developing and using guidelines and checklists."
Fifty Years of Retracted Medical Publications From 1975 to 2024: A Comprehensive Analysis of Trends, Reasons, and Countries Using the Retraction Watch Database
The leading reasons for retraction included data concerns (31.47%), fraud (11.37%), peer review issues (11.21%), referencing issues (7.54%), and ethical violations (7.09%). . . Temporal analysis indicated a steady rise in retractions, with data concerns and fraud doubling typically every 5.5 and 5.2 years."
Implementing a Unified NIH Funding Strategy to Guide Consistent and Clearer Award Decisions
"NIH has implemented steps towards a unified strategy that will help guide clearer and consistent funding decisions across all Institutes, Centers, and Offices (ICOs). . . Going forward, ICOs will be considering peer review information in its entirety. NIH ICOs will not rely on funding paylines in developing pay plans. Rather, ICOs will consider these scores in context of their and NIH’s priorities, strategic plans, and budgets. ICO Directors will continue to have the delegated authority to decide what is funded by their ICOs."
🖥️ Watching
The Science Behind Dramatically Better Conversations
In this TED talk, journalist and author Charles Duhigg shares that the key to deeply connecting with people is to ask the right kinds of questions. He also shares the three types of conversations, ways to identify what type of conversation is occurring, and how to match that conversation. So in the spirit of his experiment: When was the last time you cried in front of someone?
Thank you so much for reading.
Warmly,
Crystal
