Academia - Should I incorporate someone else’s comment into my answer?

Yes, you should incorporate information from comments into your answer if you think it will improve the quality of your answer!

Also see (on Meta SE):

  • Should I incorporate useful comments into my answer, or just upvote them?
  • Should I revise my answers based on comments? If so, how to properly attribute?
  • Comment subsumption etiquette
  • How to encourage people to edit answers instead of posting additional information in comments?

You can incorporate information from comments into your own answer, provided that you make it clear who wrote the comment. In fact, the footer of every page on a Stack Exchange site says:

USER CONTRIBUTIONS LICENSED UNDER CC BY-SA 3.0 WITH ATTRIBUTION REQUIRED

Since comments are user contributions, using them in your answers requires proper attribution according the the rules set out in the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 licence.

Note: I included the quote from the footer to point something out that many Stack Exchange users overlook. The intent is not to say this should be attached to every (partially) quoted comment. (Copied from a comment, since comments are ephemeral.)

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