Geoff Brumfiel
Geoff Brumfiel works as a senior editor and correspondent on NPR's science desk. His editing duties include science and space, while his reporting focuses on the intersection of science and national security.
From April of 2016 to September of 2018, Brumfiel served as an editor overseeing basic research and climate science. Prior to that, he worked for three years as a reporter covering physics and space for the network. Brumfiel has carried his microphone into ghost villages created by the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan. He's tracked the journey of highly enriched uranium as it was shipped out of Poland. For a story on how animals drink, he crouched for over an hour and tried to convince his neighbor's cat to lap a bowl of milk.
Before NPR, Brumfiel was based in London as a senior reporter for Nature Magazine from 2007-2013. There, he covered energy, space, climate, and the physical sciences. From 2002 – 2007, Brumfiel was Nature Magazine's Washington Correspondent.
Brumfiel is the 2013 winner of the Association of British Science Writers award for news reporting on the Fukushima nuclear accident.
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The system is designed to provide early warning of what might or might not be actual side effects. But anti-vaccine groups are bending the data to their own ends.
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Jeff Bezos announced that he will make a brief trip into space next month. The launch could herald a new era of space tourism.
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President Biden told U.S. intelligence agencies to investigate whether the coronavirus spread after a lab leak in China. Scientists welcome the request, but many still think it came from the wild.
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Leading U.S. officials have renewed calls for a deeper investigation into the origins of the coronavirus outbreak.
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The idea of herd immunity has been sold to the public as the way out of the pandemic. Some medical experts say the idea is probably not that useful in terms of understanding how the pandemic ends.
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The coronavirus pandemic has created an opening for vaccine opponents to peddle alternative therapies, unproven cures and website subscriptions.
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It seems like computers are getting smaller all the time. Now some companies are betting big on new ones that run at the atomic level — tiny machines that could have a huge impact.
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Vaccines have created a way out of the COVID-19 pandemic, but public health experts are worried that hesitancy and misinformation may stop the U.S. from reaching the goal of herd immunity.
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Nuclear inspections have been a key part of the Iran nuclear deal. International inspectors stand to permanently lose access to key sites, unless the U.S. and Iran can find a way forward.
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In 1721, London was in the grips of a deadly smallpox epidemic. One woman learned how to stop it, but her solution sowed political division.
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Nuclear power is potentially dangerous. So is sending humans to Mars. But some researchers think a nuclear-powered rocket might be the best way to travel to the red planet.
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A new global treaty banning nuclear weapons will go into force on Friday. More than 80 countries have signed on to it — but none of them are countries that have nuclear weapons.