Why are French scientists striking?

Abstract

Heads have yet to roll, but the current strike by over 2000 senior French scientists does take the mind back to an earlier revolution there. According to Reuters, one of the strike leaders climbed a statue outside Paris City Hall and shouted: “The laboratories launch the struggle as of today.” The strike follows a petition, called Let's Save Research, that started in January and which has been signed by over 70000 scientists in France, including 60% of the country's public-sector researchers and over 5000 laboratory directors. 2 weeks ago, over 40 000 writers, philosophers, teachers, and artists in France signed a declaration calling the Government “anti-intellectual”. The scientists' strike is obviously political, being timed for French regional elections on March 21 and 28. So, who is striking, and why? The strikers have not actually downed pipettes, as it were. What has happened is that laboratory directors and senior scientists at state-financed institutes, such as the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), have stopped administrative duties. The strikers are protesting against cuts in funding and jobs. CNRS is still owed half its funding for 2002. INSERM's budget was cut by 10% last year. Around 550 permanent entry-level posts have been axed, to be replaced by a handful of temporary contracts. The senior scientists fear that young French scientists will move abroad. To avert industrial action, the French Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, had offered an extra €3·7 billion by 2007 and said that he would unblock credits worth €300 million, but the striking scientists were unimpressed and took to the streets. Libération accused the centre-right Government of a “war against intelligence”, to which Raffarin retorted: “Bringing together the discontent during an election campaign is an old trick that usually ends up disserving the people who are facing the difficulties.” Teachers and health, energy, and theatre workers are also planning industrial action in the election run-up. The action by French scientists has put research, and the perils of underfunding research, into the foreground among the public both there and elsewhere. Spending in the European Union on research and development as a proportion of gross domestic product increased by only 0·01% between 2001 and 2002, to 1·99%. The 2002 Barcelona Council set an EU target of 3% by 2010, so there is a long way to go. But the latest figures show that research spending as a proportion of gross domestic product fell from 2·23% in 2001 to 2·20% in 2002 in France. The figures are 1·89% falling to 1·84% in the UK. Japan spends 2·98% and the USA spends 2·8% of gross domestic product on research and development, which makes research in Europe underfunded by comparision. Researchers in Europe will be eagerly awaiting slices of budget from the proposed European Research Council, although that is unlikely to get off the ground until 2007. The concept of Europe-wide research highlights another problem, one that especially affects clinical research, where the need for multicentre clinical trials and cross-disciplinary research is increasingly important. Except perhaps in oncology, collaborations between clinical researchers in different European countries is at worryingly low levels. Part of the reason is that the structure of most European funding for clinical research remains nationalistic. Francis Crawley, Secretary General of the European Forum for Good Clinical Practice, told The Lancet last week: “The relation between national and European research is the crux of the issue. It is not well understood. So long as things are as they are, the French will continue to be French (ie, they will strike), the British British, and the Germans German. This is fine if this is what ‘Europeans’ want. But then we need to accept the consequences (and realities) for both research and healthcare.” So, the striking scientists in France may be doing European research, especially clinical research, a large favour. They have made underfunding an issue in Europe, which could have the happy by-product of widening scientific collaborations on that continent.