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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By converting sounds to images, scientists can use artificial intelligence to quickly find and assess animals' calls, even deep in the ocean. -
Pfizer has received emergency use authorization for a COVID-19 pill, giving doctors a new tool for treating the virus. Who qualifies to take it and is it expected to work against the omicron variant?
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Pfizer researchers looking for a drug to treat SARS found clues that gave the company a head start in its quest for a pill to treat COVID-19, including the omicron variant. -
Protein subunit vaccines work by injecting people with a tiny portion of a virus. In the case of the COVID-19 vaccine, that tiny portion is the spike protein that the coronavirus uses to enter cells. -
The companies say a study of more than 10,000 volunteers showed a vaccine efficacy of 95% or greater for people receiving the booster. -
Are vaccinated people who get COVID as likely to spread the infection as unvaccinated people? Scientists don't think so. -
The pharmaceutical company announced that its experimental pill reduced hospitalizations and deaths by half in people infected with the coronavirus. The findings are not peer reviewed.
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The committee of independent experts advising the FDA on vaccines meets Friday. They'll be considering Pfizer's application to start offering COVID-19 vaccine boosters to all Americans older than 16.
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After vaccination, antibody levels can help predict how much protection a COVID-19 shot offers, scientists are learning. The finding could speed up the development of future vaccines. -
The lab has access to a high-security facility that Pfizer needed to prove its COVID-19 vaccine was working. Now the scientists there are testing the vaccine's effectiveness against viral variants.
