Radio active
By Barry Teater and Tom Walsh
Veteran journalist Joe Palca, Ph.D., translates science news for more than 23 million listeners of National Public Radio and also serves as the back-up host for NPR's Talk of the Nation Science Friday. The Search caught up with Palca when he came to Bar Harbor to moderate two panel discussions at a day-long Symposium on Biomedical Science and Medicine in the Next 50 Years.
Q. How did you first learn about The Jackson Laboratory?
A. It was 19 years ago, as a young—or at least younger—reporter for Science magazine, that I heard talks here that I still think about today, from geneticists talking about mitochondrial DNA and imprinting and epigenetics. These were fascinating insights into a world I didn't know much about at the time, insights that are still relevant, 19 years later. It was a great entry for me.
Q. As a science reporter, do you bring some element of skepticism to the stories you develop as you try to answer the question "So what?"
A. Skepticism is important. These actual things we call "breakthroughs," which is a word we never use, are totally, totally rare. If you get penicillin, and suddenly people are walking around who would otherwise be dead from a bacterial infection, I'll give you that one. But, after that, it gets pretty hard. I'm sure that there are times when I've made it seem like it's all tied up in a neat little package. Inevitably, in every case that I can think of where I did a story that seemed to explain something, there's probably been some further advance that either made it more subtle or more complicated or more difficult than I made it sound. I could start every story: "A minor advance occurred today in science." That's the truth, right? They're all little steps, but they're all interesting. There is always going to be something new to be discovered.
