Proposed French Reforms Miss the Mark

Abstract

Both the Editorial “Long road to reform in France” by E. Brezin and A. Triller (27 June 2008, p. [1695][1]) and the News of the Week story “Will French science swallow Zerhouni's strong medicine?” by M. Enserink (28 November 2008, p. [1312][2]) convey the message that shortsighted, leftist scientists are fiercely fighting an overdue modernization of our scientific organization. As someone with practical experience in the French system, I find this position strikingly biased. The coexistence of INSERM, CNRS, and CEA was not a source of major complication for French scientists as long as our governments kept them functional. We could choose to deal with only one of them, and scientists controlled the direction of each institution. Horrific complications began only when, mainly for ideological reasons, the government began withdrawing real money from INSERM, CNRS, and CEA, and instead redistributed it through a bewildering and ever-increasing number of new program-based agencies. The French system has long been an example of scientific freedom. Instead of capitalizing on that, France has been desperately trying to kill its own system and to emulate the American way of managing scientists. A system based on fierce selection of scientists—at the expense of wasting qualified people—may be acceptable in America, where the reservoir of scientists extends to the rest of the world. However, in France, scientists are much too scarce a resource to be cavalierly dismissed. The French government should not implement a management system based on fear and insecurity at a time when young scientists are already deterred by the treatment of scientists and are fleeing scientific careers. Moreover, before declaring that French and American universities have the same mission, we must recognize the profound differences between the two in functions, resources, and organization. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1161025 [2]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.322.5906.1312