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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Emergency use authorization makes it easier for doctors to use a drug in a manner not specifically approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA granted these drugs this status in March. -
While only remdesivir has been scientifically shown to help treat COVID-19, it is not a particularly effective drug. More drugs like it and fundamentally different ones are in the pipeline. -
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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To speed vaccine production from years to months, companies must start making a vaccine in large quantities even before it's clear a vaccine works. -
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. -
In the 1950s, as Dr. Jonas Salk and virologist Albert Sabin worked to create a vaccine to prevent infantile paralysis, the threat from polio was already long familiar to Americans. -
People in the 1950s anxiously waited for scientists to come up with ways to protect children from polio. The road to a polio vaccine might contain some lessons for today's health crisis.
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The impact of the drug on the virus is being studied, but there is not yet evidence from medical trials — and there have been some warnings about side effects from taking the medicine. -
Cambridge, Mass.-based Moderna, Inc., is reporting preliminary data suggesting its COVID-19 vaccine is safe, and appears to be triggering an immune response in test subjects. -
Initial results from a study of a COVID-19 vaccine suggest it is safe, and capable of generating the kind of immune response that may protect patients from getting the disease.
