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 Food and Drug Administration has now extended it authorization for Pfizer/BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine booster to everyone 16 and older.
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A vaccine from a Canadian biotech firm Medicago has been found to be effective at preventing moderate to severe disease. It could soon become the first plant-based vaccine authorized for human use. -
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 omicron variant of the not been found in the United States yet. Here's what's we known about it, how dangerous it's likely to be, and whether vaccines or new drugs will be effective against it.
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Whatever happened to Novavax and Sanofi's COVID-19 vaccines? Many people thought at the beginning of the pandemic that these were the two most likely vaccines to succeed.
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The US Food and Drug Administration has authorized COVID vaccine boosters for all adults. We look at what this means for people who are considering getting their third shot.
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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. -
Can a vaccinated person with a breakthrough infection infect others? Conventional wisdom says yes, but new research says it's not all that likely.
