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GIST FAQ
Why do the answers exactly mirror the questions?
The nested Q&A mirroring is at the heart of the system, and is meant to help ensure that researchers:
1. Come up with a tightly integrated unit of communication
2. Do not pose questions that they don't address at some later stage
3. Do not, for the most part, provide answers for previously unforeshadowed questions. While I think it's fine that some implications are not foreshadowed, the main focus of the Discussion should be to answer previously introduced questions. It's a typical error to get carried away in the Discussion with highly speculative issues.
The questions always lead to answers, but can't answers can also lead to questions?
I agree, but in both of the cases I consider below, this does not lead to any need to allow this within GIST. There may be other cases where it does!
Case 1: In some papers, an hypothesis is proposed in the Intro, and then rejected in the early part of the Results, on the basis of contradictory findings. Then, still within the Results, an alternative (and previously un-introduced, and probably unimagined) hypothesis becomes the focus of some subsequent experiment, reported upon in a later part of the Results. Thus should the template have a provision for a Q1 > A > Q2 type of progression? I think the answer is no because I see that the template's main job is to capture the logical, rather than the chronological, flow of the project. In which regard, both Q1 and Q2 are *logical* daughters of Q1's already existing higher-order question, even if, for Q2, this only became apparent to the researcher after Q1 had been answered. (Of course the chronological order may need to be made clear in the text of the paper itself, particularly for example, if both (1) the same data set is being used to address the two questions and (2) the optimal experimental design for Q2 is different from that used for Q1.)
Case 2: In the Discussion, answers from the current study can of course suggest questions to be addressed in the future. But I would not see such questions as central enough to be included in the GIST diagram. In support of this view, I think that questions of this type would rarely find their way into a paper's Abstract.
In the example of paper diagrammed using GIST -on the Picobar Tree Frog- lower-level answers only ever connect to answers one level higher. In general, are there not more possibilties?
It is true that, in principle, answers could "talk to each other" in more ways than shown in my diagrams, and I think that flexibility in this aspect is required in the program. The most obvious counter-example I can think of comes from mathematical proofs, where very un-nested flows of reasoning can occur. Nevertheless, I think that in scientific research, the highly nested flow pattern shown in my diagrams is far and away the most typical case, for both questions and answers. In science, arguments (as opposed to explanatory models) are usually very basic, and if they seem complicated it's probably because of the author's poor communication skills! And therefore I think there is much value in making the flow pattern I have used here the default, but not required, pattern.
If you have any Questions or Comments please leave a comment in the guestbook, using the link below, or email Geoff Hyde at the National Centre For Biological Science, Bangalore: geoffATncbsDOTresDOTin
See a paper 
summarised with GIST
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