New York Times science reporter Gina Kolata says she gives story ideas the "dinner table test" by seeing if they are interesting to her family and friends.

NYT reporter explains politics of science

In the heated battles that can ensue over medical and scientific issues as varied as mammography screenings and flu vaccines, politics is often the deciding factor in how the debate is resolved, said Gina Kolata, an award-winning New York Times science reporter, in a Feb. 11 master's tea at Davenport College sponsored by the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism. "Science didn't play much of a role in the debate over whether all women in their 40s should get mammograms, Congress did," said Kolata, who has written many articles on mammography. "The mammography industry is $3 billion a year, so there is a financial interest at stake in the debate. Politics often carries the day and science doesn't. Let's tell people what the science says and let them make up their minds." This philosophy often guides the kind of stories Kolata chooses to write about, the reporter explained. The author of four books and hundreds of magazine and New York Times articles, Kolata says she writes for herself. "I look for stories with a bigger message," she noted. "If it's something I would want to read about, then I know its something worth writing." Kolata's stories also have to pass the "dinner table test," she said: If she presents a story idea to her family or friends and their eyes start to glaze over, "then you know that story fails." Because of her children's decision not to take SAT study courses, Kolata was compelled to write a story about whether or not SAT coaching works. "I'd always wondered whether they would have gotten 1600s if they'd taken these courses," Kolata said. "I know this question must have been running through the minds of other parents and children and it interested me." When, in the course of her reporting, she found out that coaching doesn't significantly improve scores, she noted, it justified her own children's decisions and answered her own questions. Kolata's questions have often turned into lbest-selling books. She wondered why the 1918 flu pandemic, which wiped out hundreds of thousands of people in the prime of their lives within one flu season, was essentially left out of history books. Her research led to her book "Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It." "The pandemic is remembered among scientists, but not among the rest of the world," Kolata said. "The lasting legacy of 1918 is a lingering fear of flu shots and not a respect for what the infection can do. About 20,000 people a year still die from influenza." Kolata has often been praised for making very complicated scientific issues clear in her articles. She has a strong scientific background and studied molecular biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before obtaining a master's degree in applied mathematics at the University of Maryland. But her disdain for the lab led her to pursue writing, she said, noting that her interest was piqued when she met a writer while lying on a beach at Woods Hole, where she was studying marine biology. Her first article was a book review of "The Coming of The Golden Age," for the Nation. After that was well received, she began writing for Science magazine. She wrote a letter to the New York Times saying simply, "My dream in life is to write for The New York Times." The letter led to an interview with a New York Times editor, but she didn't realize her dream until three years later, when the editor finally hired her. Kolata's most recent New York Times article is on exercise, one of her passions and the subject of her fifth book, which she is currently writing. Her reporting revealed that there are major genetic differences in whether people can get fit. "The myth is that if you're not getting anywhere in your exercise program, then you're just cheating or you're not really trying or you need a personal trainer," said Kolata. "But it turns out that there are people who will never get thinner." Kolata said the book will seek answers to questions like, "What is really true in exercise?" "What goes on in gyms?" "Can you really grow muscles and get more aerobically fit?" and "How much exercise do you really need to make your heart healthier?" Though she is still just "writing for herself," Kolata said she hopes her own questions reflect what readers are thinking. 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