Richard Harris
Award-winning journalist Richard Harris has reported on a wide range of topics in science, medicine and the environment since he joined NPR in 1986. In early 2014, his focus shifted from an emphasis on climate change and the environment to biomedical research.
Harris has traveled to all seven continents for NPR. His reports have originated from Timbuktu, the South Pole, the Galapagos Islands, Beijing during the SARS epidemic, the center of Greenland, the Amazon rain forest, the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro (for a story about tuberculosis), and Japan to cover the nuclear aftermath of the 2011 tsunami.
In 2010, Harris' reporting revealed that the blown-out BP oil well in the Gulf of Mexico was spewing out far more oil than asserted in the official estimates. That revelation led the federal government to make a more realistic assessment of the extent of the spill.
Harris covered climate change for decades. He reported from the United Nations climate negotiations, starting with the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, and including Kyoto in 1997 and Copenhagen in 2009. Harris was a major contributor to NPR's award-winning 2007-2008 "Climate Connections" series.
Over the course of his career, Harris has been the recipient of many prestigious awards. Those include the American Geophysical Union's 2013 Presidential Citation for Science and Society. He shared the 2009 National Academy of Sciences Communication Award and was a finalist again in 2011. In 2002, Harris was elected an honorary member of Sigma Xi, the scientific research society. Harris shared a 1995 Peabody Award for investigative reporting on NPR about the tobacco industry. Since 1988, the American Association for the Advancement of Science has honored Harris three times with its science journalism award.
Before joining NPR, Harris was a science writer for the San Francisco Examiner. From 1981 to 1983, Harris was a staff writer at The Tri-Valley Herald in Livermore, California, covering science, technology, and health issues related to the nuclear weapons lab in Livermore. He started his career as an AAAS Mass Media Science Fellow at the now-defunct Washington Star in DC.
Harris is co-founder of the Washington, DC, Area Science Writers Association, and is past president of the National Association of Science Writers. He serves on the board of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.
Harris' book Rigor Mortis was published in 2017. The book covers the biomedicine "reproducibility crisis" — many studies can't be reproduced in other labs, often due to lack of rigor, hence the book's title. Rigor Mortis was a finalist for the 2018 National Academy of Sciences/Keck Communication Award.
A California native, Harris returned to the University of California-Santa Cruz in 2012, to give a commencement address at Crown College, where he had given a valedictory address at his own graduation. He earned a bachelor's degree at the school in biology, with highest honors.
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Scientists have discovered an enzyme that is elevated in people and mice who exercise a lot. They hope the discovery could lead to medicine that would have some of the benefits of exercise.
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The surge in coronavirus cases has led to a sharp demand for testing, making labs fall further behind. That, in turn, is hampering efforts to identify and isolate people who are spreading the disease.
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The White House coronavirus task force gave its first public briefing in months on Friday after daily COVID-19 case numbers have reached record levels.
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Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top federal health officials have testified Tuesday in the House. The committee is probing the Trump administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic.
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A wildlife biologist got involved in coronavirus research by raising important questions about the accuracy of the test used to diagnose COVID-19.
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NPR economics, science and politics correspondents relay the latest in the response to the coronavirus epidemic in the United States.
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NPR economics, national and science correspondents relay the latest news in the response to the coronavirus epidemic in the United States.
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A dismal jobs report, on top of millions of unemployment claims, paints a dire picture of the economic carnage of the coronavirus. NPR correspondents examine that — and take a look at mask science.
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Last week, more than 6 million jobless Americans sought unemployment benefits. NPR correspondents look at the rising economic fallout from COVID-19 — and the latest science and political news.
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Following the latest Coronavirus Task Force briefing, NPR correspondents detail the White House plan to categorize counties based on their coronavirus risk and the congressional rescue bill.