Richard Harris Email Address

Taking A Breather

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I was a science correspondent at NPR for 35 years. I'm currently kicking back for a bit. My 2017 book, Rigor Mortis, is about why a lot of biomedical research is of questionable value. Many studies can't be reproduced in other labs. Academic scientists face perverse incentives -- what's best for their careers is often not what's best for science.The good news is efforts are afoot to improve the biomedical research enterprise. Rigor Mortis is published by Basic Books. Over the past 35 years, NPR listeners have heard me report on everything from oil spills and global warming to molecular biology and particle physics. With the support of my colleagues on NPR's talented science desk, I've had the good fortune to: - Be the first to report that the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was actually ten times worse than the government had estimated. -Cover climate change at major summits, from Rio and Kyoto to Copenhagen and beyond. -Share a 1995 Peabody for exposing the tobacco industry’s hidden knowledge about the addictive nature and health hazards of smoking. -Travel to the South Pole, Arctic Ocean, Greenland, the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, and beyond to explain climate change, biology and threats to the world’s oceans. -Critically analyze discoveries in astronomy and physics, such as the accelerating expansion of the universe, claims of faster-than-light particles, the Higgs boson and the dramatic repair of the Hubble Space Telescope. -Make sense of disasters, including: the Fukushima meltdowns; earthquakes in Haiti, California and Chile; the SARS epidemic in China; volcanic eruptions in Iceland; and the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. -Conceive, report, and write an eight-part series examining the stresses on biomedical research in the United States caused by wildly fluctuating funding levels.