In an unprecedented revolt, thousands of scientists took to the streets across France last week, and half the country鈥檚 lab directors threatened to resign.
They were protesting at the abolition of 550 junior research posts, and the government鈥檚 continuing failure to release a quarter of the research budgets for 2002 and 2003, even though the 2003 budget had been cut by 23 per cent. 鈥淭hey thought we would say nothing,鈥� says Alain Trautmann, an immunologist at the Cochin Institute in Paris and one of the leaders of the protest. If the government has not surrendered in a few weeks, he says, the directors will refuse to sign orders and contracts, and the resulting bureaucratic backlog will bring research to a halt.
France has a centralised research system in which scientists are regarded as civil servants, and recent efforts by the government to trim the number of bureaucrats fell disproportionately on researchers. There is also a widespread feeling, shared by scientists in other European countries, that bureaucracy and inadequate funding are strangling research. Young researchers are emigrating, especially to the US.
Advertisement
On Tuesday the protesters, the French Academy and prominent scientists met to organise a series of meetings 鈥� called 鈥淓states General鈥� like those that preceded the French Revolution 鈥� to restructure French research. Four leading French scientists, including Nobel prizewinner Fran莽ois Jacob, have already proposed a radical shift of management from government to universities, saying that under the current arrangements French science can no longer compete internationally on equal terms.