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Entente pas cordiale

Posted for Declan Butler

French researchers have replied with a 5-minute video rebuke to a fiery speech by Nicolas Sarkozy where the French president chastised at length the country’s scientists.

As described in an Editorial in this week’s Nature – “No time for rhetoric” – “Sarkozy lambasted the country’s university system as “"infantilizing" and “paralysing for creativity and innovation,” and implied that French researchers were fainéants (layabouts) with cushy jobs, and no match for their supposedly more industrious British counterparts.” (See also “French scientists revolt against government reforms”.)

The 5-minute video sets excerpts of Sarkozy’s speech to a jaunty tune and contests his assertions about the performance of French researchers using science indicators spliced in showing that French research is not in such an apocalyptic state as the president infers. I’ve made a similar point in an article published in 2007 – “French election: Is French science in decline…”


To get more details about the video, see this post by my confrère Sylvestre Huet – a journalist at the French newspaper Libération, on his excellent blog Sciences2. The video was posted yesterday and has already attracted almost 50,000 views, a number that is growing by the hour.

Meanwhile “Let’s save research,” a grassroots organization of French researchers, called 1 Feb for researchers to protest Sarkozy’s assertions about French scientists not being productive, by inundating the Elysée president palace with mailed copies of their most recent articles to “improve his understanding of French scientific productivity.”

In a more sober protest at Sarkozy’s speech, the scientific board of the CNRS, the largest basic research agency in Europe, 27 January, said it joined the “strong emotion of researchers that has been provoked by the speech of the President of the Republic,” and was “outraged by the pronouncing of manifest untruths, that drew on partial elements and errors about French research.” The board expressed its “profound disapproval” of what it described as a “provocation”.

Sarkozy should perhaps take a leaf out of Obama’s oratory textbook – here’s a president who clearly knows how to rub researchers up the right way, and get the eyes moist at the lab bench. French researchers can only dream of hearing words from Sarkozy such as those of Obama’s 17 December speech where he wooed researchers thus:

Right now, in labs, classrooms and companies across America, our leading minds are hard at work chasing the next big idea, on the cusp of breakthroughs that could revolutionize our lives. But history tells us that they cannot do it alone. From landing on the moon, to sequencing the human genome, to inventing the Internet, America has been the first to cross that new frontier because we had leaders who paved the way: leaders like President Kennedy, who inspired us to push the boundaries of the known world and achieve the impossible; leaders who not only invested in our scientists, but who respected the integrity of the scientific process.

Oui, “words do matter.”

Comments

  1. Report this comment

    Yousry El-Kassaby said:

    If you do not understand science and have no idea of what is happening in your backyard, then you could say whatever you want. But be careful, the public will get even with you sooner or later.

  2. Report this comment

    Stephen Glasby said:

    Never before in the history of

    humanity has the role of research and education been more important

    for our future. President Sarkozy

    would do well to think deeply

    about the visions of President

    Obama.

  3. Report this comment

    FrenchFuriousScientist said:

    Thank you so much for this great article, the french community will appreciate this help.

    You can find english versions of this video if you need some translations (the link is given on this comment).

  4. Report this comment

    Diane Roman said:

    Thank you very much for helping french researchers with this article. We currently have to deal with a kind of W-Bush.

    Let’s dream we will elect our Obama’s ASAP !

  5. Report this comment

    Urban Philippe said:

    Many many thanks for your kind (and explicit) words ! We DO need such support and demonstrations of friendships in such a nightmare. And yes, “words do matter” …

  6. Report this comment

    Jacques Lerin said:

    There’s certainly room for universities and research centers to reform. The main point is not that researchers are laking ideas but that “red tape” is the norm whenever you are looking forward to buy materials that are needed for your research.

  7. Report this comment

    Richard Darbéra said:

    I am not sure Sylvestre Huet’s blog is that excellent . The video is funny but Sylvestre should have mentioned that it is full of distorted data. When one gets back to the sources quoted in the video, Sarkozy’s statements are much closer to the truth. For instance from OST “Key Figures on Science and Technology” 2006, by combining the figures of tables I.2 and III.6, we see that per dollar spent the British publish 75% more than the French and the Germans 2% less. Table III.5 showing publications per researcher confirms this ranking but with smaller differences: When the European researcher (25 countries) publishes 100, the German researcher publishes 102, the French 109 and the British 141. The champion is the Swede with 192

  8. Report this comment

    Janina Rozborska said:

    In response to Richard Darbéra: this purely numerical and quantitative assessment of research “productivity” is typical of a current mindset which equates “more” with “better”, across the disciplines. But how do you effectively gauge the value of research, measure its resonance, its inventiveness, its originality, its critical power, its durability? By making sure it gets read, for one. By specialists, for another. Time-consuming, probably costly. Much easier to see who has the higher stack of books. Tape-measures out, evaluators everywhere!

  9. Report this comment

    Janina Rozborska said:

    Just to add this, in corroboration, published in a French daily today by the president of the Sorbonne (Paris IV). In an open letter on the uses of research (specifically in the humanities) he has this to say :

    “On a beaucoup glosé sur l’évaluation des universitaires. Eh bien, sur ce plan-là, le gouvernement gagnerait à mettre le qualitatif en avant. Nous écrivons des livres et des articles : qui veut les évaluer doit les lire et en comprendre les conclusions, pas seulement les compter.”

    Translation (mine) :

    “A lot has been written about evaluating academics. Well, with that in mind, the government would do better to stress the qualitative dimension. We write books and articles: whoever wishes to evaluate them has to read them and understand their conclusions, not just count them.”

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