Abstract
Thousands of French researchers are joining an online protest and threatening a boycott of their administrative work over the government's handling of science funding over recent years. Michael Gross reports.
Over 30,000 French scientists have signed an online petition to “save research” set up last month, with a pledge to stop their administrative duties unless the government starts listening to their complaints about funding.
There is one signature for every minute that has passed since the petition – aiming to save the French public research base from the latest cuts imposed by the government – went online on January 7. Which clocks up to an impressive 30,885 by mid-day on January 27. Signing the petition, all group leaders and institute directors pledge to resign collectively from their administrative duties if the government does not ameliorate the situation (http://recherche-en-danger.apinc.org). In the rather soft-spoken world of French research, this amounts to a revolution. But how did it come to this?
There had been some of discontent over budget cuts for years, but it all started to boil over when the government passed the 2004 research budget at the beginning of December, with another cut mainly hitting the research institutes. Realising that things were going from bad to worse, geneticist Alain Trautmann, a group leader at the Institut Cochin in Paris, together with a colleague from the Institut Pasteur, wrote a pamphlet entitled “The silence of the lambs”. On December 17 he assembled a few dozen fellow biologists at the Cochin institute to discuss it. From this meeting emerged the threat of collective resignation from administrative duties. By Christmas, there was a definitive text for a petition and a list of 150 senior researchers who supported it.
Under the heading “Sauvons la recherche!” (“Let's save research!”), the petition delivers a poignant analysis of the importance of publicly funded fundamental research for the economic welfare of the country. It accuses the government of effectively “shutting down the public research sector”, without offering anything to replace it. Amongst the most severe problems, researchers name underfunding and withholding of funds already agreed by parliament, a lack of career prospects for young researchers that continues to fuel the transatlantic brain drain, and misguided attempts of politicians to decide what kind of research should be done. Therefore, their key demands are:
∗Immediate payment of the funds that were withheld;
∗Increasing the number of entry-level appointments via the national competitions (concours);
∗Where research strategy has to be decided on a national level, this should involve a “National Assembly” of scientists.
The government seems to have been wrongfooted by the massive success of the petition. In an open letter to the scientists published on her ministry's website late last month, the research minister Claudie Haigneré addresses all research workers “in order to inform you better about the government policies”. Implying that the researchers misunderstood the situation, she essentially claimed that the government wants to stimulate fundamental research and that there is nothing wrong with the research budget so researchers have no reason to complain. Far from convincing them, however, she ignited their fury even more. As Trautmann told the newspaper Le Monde: “Each time [prime minister] Jean-Pierre Raffarin or Claudie Haigneré make public statements saying that the worries of the researchers are unjustified, the number of signatures shoots up.” Similarly, a meeting held on January 16 between the research minister and a delegation from the movement now named “Sauver la Recherche” went by without any concessions from the government side.
In a response to Haigneré, CNRS chemist Henri Audier deplored that the minister hasn't moved from the position she publicised in September 2003, practically ignoring the criticism and demands of the researchers. Like many other researchers, he resents that this appears to place scientists on the bottom rung of society, as their requests are less heeded than for instance the worries of hunters, restaurant owners, or tobacco dealers. In a detailed appendix to his letter, he goes through the number-crunching to contradict the government's claims. He calculates that, even if the research grants that were agreed for 2002 but have remained unpaid are going to be paid eventually, the funding falls short of a zero growth from January 2002 to January 2004 by an amount of over 600 million euros.
The government claims that public research funding in France is already at 0.95 per cent of gross domestic product, approaching the 1 per cent target set by the EU, and argues that all efforts should be focused on stimulating privately funded research. Audier counters that France, unlike other European countries, has included military, space, and nuclear research in this figure. Take these out, and the comparable figure is 0.60 per cent, which means that the country needs an increase in research spending of more than 50 per cent to meet the EU target by 2010 and to remain competitive. Many scientists agree with his figures more than with the official ones. “Haigneré manipulates the figures and tries to put us to sleep with her sweet-talking,” says one CNRS researcher.
Money and job matters apart, many researchers are also deeply unhappy about the government's continuous centralistic approach to deciding what is important, coupled with a lack of understanding of the real importance of fundamental knowledge.
Researchers quote the embarrassing example of prion research. In 1996, when BSE was a major worry, French officials realised they did not have a single research group working on prions. They chose a researcher who was a well-known authority on coronaviruses, and persuaded him to abandon that field – considered marginal at the time – in favour of prion research. Seven years later, along came SARS. Researchers discovered it was caused by a coronavirus, and French officials found out their country no longer had an expert for this kind of pathogen.
The media have given the revolt of the researchers much attention and sympathy. Le Monde placed the research crisis in the larger context of what they call the “Great misery of the French universities.” Higher education is, like research, strapped for cash, and rattled by the reorganisation of the degrees into a new three-tier system (licence, master, doctorate). A few universities have already threatened they won't be able to pass their budget because of insufficient funds. Others have extended the winter vacation to save on the heating bills.
What next? With no sign of movement from the government so far, positive action looks likely to be on the cards. The research workers unions – after a brief period of sulking over the sidelining by the online petition – announced national strike action for the 29th of January. Then, this month, there is likely to be a crunch time. If the movement decides to go ahead with the collective resignation, the entire research apparatus will be thrown into chaos, as research groups and institutes practically have no legal status in the absence of their leaders. It appears like a desperate step to take, but judging by the fury that has built in the research institutes, and which the government so far hasn't taken very seriously, it might actually happen.
Biography
Michael Gross is a science writer in residence at the school of crystallography, Birkbeck College, University of London UK. He can be contacted via his web page at www.proseandpassion.com