Joe Palca
Joe Palca is a science correspondent for NPR. Since joining NPR in 1992, Palca has covered a range of science topics — everything from biomedical research to astronomy. He is currently focused on the eponymous series, "Joe's Big Idea." Stories in the series explore the minds and motivations of scientists and inventors. Palca is also the founder of NPR Scicommers – A science communication collective.
Palca began his journalism career in television in 1982, working as a health producer for the CBS affiliate in Washington, DC. In 1986, he left television for a seven-year stint as a print journalist, first as the Washington news editor for Nature, and then as a senior correspondent for Science Magazine.
In October 2009, Palca took a six-month leave from NPR to become science writer in residence at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
Palca has won numerous awards, including the National Academies Communications Award, the Science-in-Society Award of the National Association of Science Writers, the American Chemical Society's James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public, the American Association for the Advancement of Science Journalism Prize, and the Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Writing. In 2019, Palca was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for outstanding achievement in journalism.
With Flora Lichtman, Palca is the co-author of Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us (Wiley, 2011).
He comes to journalism from a science background, having received a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he worked on human sleep physiology.
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The FDA has said that the COVID-19 vaccine made by Pfizer can be used in children as young as 12, expanding the number of people in the U.S. who qualify for the vaccine.
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Researchers are trying to come up with tests that can be performed using a blood sample that will determine not only whether a COVID-19 vaccine will work but also for how long.
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Denmark has temporarily suspended giving people the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in order to investigate whether some potentially serious medical conditions are related to the vaccine.
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Exposing people to a potentially fatal disease could hasten understanding of COVID-19 and development of new vaccines and treatments. But the risks of such studies raise serious ethical questions.
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A look at the week's COVID-19 and vaccine news, including new information from the variant out of the United Kingdom.
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White House physician Sean Conley says that President Trump was doing "very well" and that the symptoms he had are resolving and improving.
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NASA is sending a six-wheeled rover to Mars to look for signs of microbial life stored in the rocks at Jezero crater. The rover is also the first step in bringing samples of Martian rock to Earth.
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There is only one drug that researchers say has been scientifically shown to help COVID-19: remdesivir. But it is not proven to reduce mortality. So, researchers keep looking for other treatments.
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A study of more than 800 health workers, first responders and others finds that taking hydroxychloroquine to prevent COVID-19 is no better than a placebo in preventing the illness.
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After the InSight lander had trouble drilling a sophisticated thermometer into the Martian surface, a Plan B also didn't work, and the instrument ended up backing itself out of the ground.