While doing experiments can allow us to find evidence for differences that would have a significant impact, at our current state differences would not be significant as many things are still not fully understood, so while there may be a difference between genes of two different bacteria, once fully understood that difference may not be a difference at all and instead they could be very similar.

The question Does the study show causation or correlation? can be very important to interpreting scientific literature because when reading papers it is important to understand the difference between the two in order to not make false claims. Claiming that a certain bacteria would be the cause of a disease would be detrimental as it would downplay and ignore the factors that are truly the cause, as opposed to the bacteria simply being correlation, a factor that is always present when something else is the cause.

The question What is the mechanism I believe is the most helpful when discussing controversy and it really plays an important role in interpreting scientific literature. Being able to understand the mechanism and a proper explanation as to why and how it works would allow for very few interpretations of the overall meaning of a piece of literature regardless as to what the researcher might think about the mechanism, as there would be a certain reaction that occurs that has a specific and set outcome. The difficult part would come from having a full understanding of what the outcome might entail. This is important when discussing controversy because having a set mechanism of action would really aid in shifting the topic to less controversial as there would be some amount of concrete evidence as to what the bacteria is actually doing.

The question How much do experiments reflect reality? plays an important role in interpreting scientific literature as many experiments that are conducted are done in very controlled environments, however the environment by which bacteria live in can be drastically different especially when thinking about using said bacteria as a probiotic. A probiotic passing through the harsh environments of the stomach would be difficult and would not reflect the results of a study.

Could anything else explain the results? Is helpful in interpreting literature as having a clear understanding of what is occurring, or an unclear understanding, can really alter how the literature is perceived. If a paper is very vague and does not explain where errors might occur a paper would be difficult to fully interpret because as a reader we would be left with many questions.