FSH 491 Course Reflection

This semester, I learned an enormous amount about topics related to the human gut microbiota, the research process, critical analysis of scientific literature, asking questions, and writing. The FSHN 491 class is extremely successful in its goals to teach students how to read, analyze, and write about scientific research literature. I am excited to take these skills and continue with an academic scientific training. Before I started the course, I knew very little about the human gut microbiota and the microbial metabolism and significance. Since this subject engulfs Dr. Stewart’s research interests, I was very eager to take the course to expand my knowledge. Throughout the curriculum, I learned about concepts such as alpha and beta diversity of gut microbiota, prokaryotic biology in terms of gene expression, and important metabolites of bacterial fermentation such as short-chain fatty acids (e.g. butyrate, propionate, acetate). Learning about the human gut microbiota helped me to understand potential mechanisms and explanations for findings in research presented in this class and other
research that I read in the past. My understanding of the research process deepened in this class from the first lecture that we discussed study designs (e.g. observational, cohort, longitudinal, and case-control). I also learned about effective use of blinding, placebo, and randomisation. This was the first class that I learned about the rigorous peer review process. Learning about the peer review process helped me to appreciate the quality of science publications in peer-reviewed journals and understand that there are many different types of peer review situations in terms of the researcher/authors and the reviewer’s blindness to one another. An important concept to grasp was that there is no perfect method of study design or peer review process and each type is coupled with its own strengths and weaknesses. Critical analysis of published literature is very important to distinguishing the quality of a researcher’s study methods and conclusions drawn. This course was the first time that I thought harshly and discussed both strengths and weaknesses of published research. Critical analysis was difficult for me at first, especially in finding and discussing weaknesses of a study’s design, methods, or statistics because I did not feel comfortable being critical of other’s published research. I improved a lot over time, especially by listening and emerging in the class discussions we had about the first two research articles. These prepared me well for the third critical review and for future critical reading skills of scientific literature. Asking questions is a major skill in the science research process and in academia.
I developed my skills further in the course by critically analyzing the research as well as developing a research question for the formal research paper. I started by choosing diet and gut microbiota and that proved to be far too broad. I refined my topic to vegetarian diets and gut microbiota and that was still too broad to discuss in a relatively short concise paper analyzing three research papers. My final research paper topic was effective in targeting a specific question by asking how do vegetarian diets affect human gut microbiota in short chain fatty acid metabolites. Learning how to ask specific research questions that have evidence to support their inception and theory is important to writing about existing research and always will prove key to conducting my own research in the
future. In this class, I also practiced writing effectively and concisely. When I began the first critical evaluation, I was tempted to almost repeat and keep the length of the entire original article. I then realized that I needed to understand the article deeper and summarize the design and findings in as few words as to be thorough and accurate. Again, the class discussion of the De Filippo article helped me to understand the article and summarize it effectively for the critical review. My writing skills improved over the course as it was my first experience in writing about primary scientific research literature. FSHN 491 has been a very great experience to learn research skills, critical reading, and effective written communication skills. I am very prepared to think critically and participate in journal clubs in my next steps in graduate school. I am excited to have taken this class for its academic and professional skills and also the deepening of my interest into emerging research especially of the human gut microbiota.