How should i present conflicting findings from two studies in a review?

[EricT]

I'm finalizing my literature review and I'm struggling with how to present the conflicting findings from two major studies. One clearly supports my hypothesis, but the other uses a more rigorous methodology to arrive at the opposite conclusion. I'm unsure if I should just note the discrepancy or try to argue for the validity of one over the other in my analysis.

[Riley.L]

I found myself treating the two papers as two pieces of a puzzle, not a duel. I just lay out what each found, then describe the conditions under which they held. The reader can see the mismatch without me pretending one side wins.

[JerryJ]

I tried weighing by study quality and ended up feeling that the rigorous one might still be limited by construct validity. We used different operationalizations for the same concept, which could explain the opposite conclusion.

[Lily.H]

Do you think the discrepancy is driven by sample differences or by how the key variables were measured?

[AmeliaS]

Honestly I started to rush to a verdict in one paragraph, then caught myself and kept it descriptive. I did a quick check of the confidence intervals and it looked like overlap sometimes, but not always, so I left the impression as inconclusive.