Davis wrote her consumer books over a 40-year career, revising some in the 1970s. She saw herself as an "interpreter," not merely a researcher. "I think of myself as a newspaper reporter, who goes out to libraries and gathers information from hundreds of journals, which most people can't understand, and I write it so that people "can" understand." She reviews scientific literature in the biochemical libraries at U.C.L.A., for instance. Her references for "Let's Get Well" totaled almost 2,500, many from cases during her nutrition practice, and she was upset when the publisher of "Let's Have Healthy Children" eliminated the 2,000 references from the 1972 revision, says author Daniel Yergin.