Anjana Ahuja has been making sense of science for Financial Times readers for years, covering everything from pandemic ethics to AI’s impact on scientific training. With more than 30 years in journalism, she has developed an instinct for what stories will resonate, and the courage to change her mind when the evidence demands it.
We meet online, and she is exactly what you might expect from a London-based columnist: articulate, direct, and, faintly visible behind her, a bicycle rack.
Finding Stories Worth Telling
“I think you have to look at who you’re writing for,” Ahuja explains. “I write with the Financial Times reader in mind, though my column can cover science, tech, health, anything with a research angle.”
Her process is surprisingly analogue: listening to the radio, reading journals, scanning emails, and cultivating an instinct for what readers will be thinking. Last week’s column explored Harvard University’s experimental new course for inquisitive science students, one that teaches unsolved problems rather than settled knowledge.
“That’s fascinating because they’re not selecting only for academic brilliance,” she says. “It raises the question of how you train scientists in the age of AI, when machines can retrieve so much at the touch of a button.”
After three decades, her story-selection criteria are precise: global relevance, novelty, and the ability to leave readers feeling they’ve gained something.
“Another rule of thumb: if I learn something and immediately want to tell someone, my kids, my husband, it might be a story.”
During COVID-19, this instinct led her to write about human challenge trials, where healthy volunteers agreed to be infected to accelerate vaccine testing. “It raises ethical issues: Should you pay people? Is it exploitative? The rules change during a pandemic.”
Timing, she notes, is everything. She still wonders why researchers would publish a study on primate kissing on an ordinary day rather than Valentine’s Day. “That would have been perfect.”
I mention my own experience of covering Serbian protests that went unnoticed until Reuters picked them up months later. “I was there! I emailed you!” I had thought at the time.
“It really is about timing,” Ahuja agrees. “Sometimes it’s just bad timing or other news dominating the agenda. But writing ahead of the curve can give you kudos. And social media helps, people will dig up your earlier work. It’s a good shop window, especially early in your career.”
When Reporting Changes, the Reporter
Good journalists follow the evidence, even when it leads them to uncomfortable places.
“Years ago, I wrote a column arguing against the sugar tax. Now, I’d probably be in favour,” she admits. “Back then, I approached it from a libertarian angle. I don’t like being told what I can eat. But now, having a better understanding of the commercial determinants of health and ultra-processed foods, I realise many people don’t have access to fresh food, a stable income, or time.”
The shift came from recognising her own privilege. “I’m privileged. I can afford to eat well. Many people can’t. So maybe environmental cues like a sugar tax can help. It’s slightly nanny-state, but nanny-state also gave us seatbelts and smoking bans. It’s all about where you draw the line.”
This willingness to wrestle with opposing views shapes her opinion writing. “Talking to people you disagree with is important. Most people aren’t evil; they have reasons for their views. When writing an opinion, you should always imagine your worst critic, what argument will they throw at you, and how will you counter it?”
I confess that I sometimes write with imaginary Facebook commenters in mind, usually middle-aged men unhappy with my existence.
“Yes, amazing how much time some people have for insulting women writers!” she laughs.
One Style, Many Disciplines
Her column ranges from genetics to climate science, yet she insists she does not adapt her style to each field.
“I write in one core style,” she says:
- Hook readers with something startling or intriguing
- Tell the story clearly, without jargon, and explain why it matters
- Drip-feed facts rather than front-loading
- Give it a beginning, middle, and end
- Leave readers with something at the end
“I strip out excess words. Never use ten when five will do. My readers are intelligent, they may not be scientists, but they can follow logic if you explain clearly.”
She also rotates topics intentionally. “I try not to write about AI three weeks in a row.”
Navigating Pushback
When dealing with criticism, Ahuja draws a sharp line between factual errors and disagreements.
“If I get a fact wrong, I correct it. The FT is a paper of record,” she says. “If people disagree with my opinion, that’s fine. It’s labelled opinion.”
Recently, she wrote that Elon Musk becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society poses problems given the society’s codes of conduct. “That will not have gone down well, but so be it.”
The pandemic brought particular challenges. “If you wrote anything pro-vaccine, the anti-vax crowd came out in force. You need thick skin, especially as a woman in journalism.”
Her advice: “Over time, you develop your own writing voice.”
The Future of Science Journalism
Science journalism is both stronger and more precarious than when she started.
“Reporting has become more professional. Universities and journals have strong press offices. The Science Media Centre exists. Science communication courses exist.”
But she sees a darker trend: “Facts are more contested. Ten years ago, most people agreed on basic facts about vaccines. Now, with fragmented media and alternative-facts culture, people pick the facts they want.”
Content creators and grifters exploit this. “People will say, ‘I saw someone online claiming the COVID vaccine lets Bill Gates alter your DNA,’ and believe it.”
The pandemic also brought an overload of preprints. “You had to judge which un-peer-reviewed papers were worth pursuing. Readers were scared for their families, jobs, the world. There was huge responsibility.”
Her approach: transparency. “Sometimes you have to say, ‘This is my understanding now, it could change.’ Transparency builds trust.”
Quick-Fire Round
Print or digital for reading science news?
“I prefer print, but I read digital.”
One scientific breakthrough you wish you had covered?
“The gene-edited babies.”
Coffee, tea, or something else when writing on deadline?
“Tea.”
Favourite scientist (living or historical)?
“Einstein or Darwin.”
Science myth you wish everyone would stop believing?
“‘Vaccines don’t work.’”
Mentor or role model?
“I didn’t know any journalists growing up. Honestly, my late dad. He told me I could do anything.”
Parting Advice
I ask Ahuja for one piece of advice for aspiring journalists. Her answer is quick, layered, and almost a manifesto:
“Read. Consume. Think deeply about the world. Practise your writing. Get outside your comfort zone. Experience life, everything you do feeds into your work. Take opportunities. Be open to them.”
Then she adds the line that encapsulates her whole career:
“Talk to people who are not like you.”
It is not just philosophy; it shaped her pandemic reporting.
“The two most important conversations I had in early Covid weren’t with scientists,” she says. “One was with a Sainsbury’s supermarket worker who told me she wouldn’t send her kids to school because Eton had closed, ‘if it’s not safe enough for the Eton boys, it’s not safe enough for mine.’ That was when I realised school attendance would become a big issue.”
“The second was with someone who feared that ethnic minority communities might become guinea pigs for the vaccine, a concern rooted in historical abuses like the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. Those conversations shaped how I wrote about the pandemic.”
She pauses, then adds:
“Life is there to be experienced, and it will make you a better journalist.”
It is advice that reflects her own career: a journalist who has spent three decades not just reporting on science, but allowing it, and the people affected by it, to challenge and change her.