French election
EDITORIAL
France's presidential elections are taking place at a time of deep debate over the French research community's standing and prospects. To further the debate, Nature's Declan Butler submitted a list of questions on research issues to the three leading candidates. Plus Nature surveys opinions from across the community, and takes a look at the research scene in France.
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EDITORIAL: Plus ça change?
NEWS FEATURES
The candidates respond
Let science speak for itself
Is French science in decline?
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Comments
I found really interesting that Nature is following so closely the French presidential.
I am a PhD student in immunology. After some peculiar events I’m finishing at the U of Toronto, Canada. I started it at the Pasteur institute in Paris.
The different persons that you interviewed are showing an aspect of French science that is in my view the biggest problem. France doesn't promote FRENCH scientifically successful young researchers. I know numbers of non-French young researchers that have grants or fellowship from their own country or from France. There are some French fellowships to do postdocs abroad. But there is NOTHING for young french scientist that would like to start something in France after one or two postdocs elsewhere. I think that there is too much money sucked up by big old institutions (or even labs).
It has been said that French are complaining too much. I think that they have also the annoying tendency to prefer what is coming from abroad just because it comes from abroad.
Posted by: Lionel LeBourhis | April 18, 2007 10:59 PM
Comments in French, if not here, are welcome there !
Posted by: Enro | April 20, 2007 11:35 AM
Thanks for the most interesting material provided on science politics, even if I do not have to vote as a foreigner. Within the statements from the three candidates there is one point missing, the "autonomy" of the scientific community (which I guess is not meant by Sarkozy's proposal on university organization). Indeed, French research is organized in a very hierarchical way and something as departmental organization is a poorly understood item (and not necessarily covered by just more autonomy for universities). True autonomy (which does not mean "laissez faire") is a crucial point which clearly distinguishes the french system from the Anglo-American or German one. Imagine a strong disagreement about the organization of science and its funding between the president of the Max Planck Society and the federal minister of research - who has to leave? None? In France the head of the CNRS had to leave. This constitutes in my view also one of the major points in the initiative "sauvons la recherche", scientists became aware that they form a community. I have my personal opinion who of the three candidates will be most opened to this idea and I think it is an important criterion.
Posted by: Jochen Lang | April 20, 2007 10:27 PM
A quick response to L LeBourhis...please look into the CNRS ATIPE program, the INSERM Avenir program, the ANR jeune chercher, the new European young researcher programs that french scientists can use in france. If you are under 40 the funding possibilities are not THAT bleak.
Posted by: American in Paris | April 24, 2007 03:57 PM
Is a lack of ability to speak and write in English, a handicap for some French scientists?
Posted by: Jan Brown | April 24, 2007 04:58 PM
I take the liberty to complement your survey on French science (Nature 446, 850-853, 19 April 2007) by a testimony from a not-so-young base researcher, although I must acknowledge that Philippe Froguel’s was very accurate. I believe mine might help to grasp the deep “culture” dominant in French science, and some serious problems this system is facing.
I happen to be one of the very few ex-alumni from the top Grandes Ecoles (in my case, the Ecole des Mines de Paris) who willingly were not diverted away from science (see Alain Trautmann’s testimony). From my 25-year experience, however, today I would advise any young man or woman educated in a top Grande Ecole to keep away from French science, unless (s)he can manage surviving in its jungle, or unless the system is soon deeply reformed and mentalities quickly evolve. Why such a harsh statement?
In contrast with the results-oriented culture that impregnates education in the Grandes Ecoles — as requested in the industry world —, many people in the French science system seem unable to realise that the very raison d’etre of science is the production of worthful knowledge. In a nutshell, it is not making discoveries that is at stake for most French researchers, but just making a career.
This is well reflected by how individual promotion can be obtained. French researchers are divided between chargés de recherche (CRs) and directeurs de recherche (DRs), the latter having higher rank and salaries. The system has it that the top pay level for CRs is usually automatically reached at the age of ~50, whatever their scientific performance has been or is, and that CRs, unless they manage to get promoted to DRs, will remain stuck at this level for 15 more years. To avoid this gloomy fate, many CRs struggle early in their career to score points required for promotion. These include, in particular, involvement in bureaucratic tasks, supervision of PhDs, and, most of all, lobbying and political skills. Consequently CRs tend to concentrate on these requirements and to accumulate such scores, because the system makes it clear that these are requisite for promotion given that scientific performance alone is not. Obviously this diverts considerable energy and time from the very purpose for which the system was established, namely scientific production. It is as well obvious that making individual scientific performance the very first item for promotion would boost the overall performance of French science, most inexpensively.
Sadly enough, the system is far from realising this. Due to the importance granted to bureaucratic and political skills, the system has generated a nomenklatura made of patrons and apparatchiks, who are mostly interested in power and little in science, and whose activity chiefly consists in organising routine and making sure the system they benefited from is perpetuated. In my institution, many of them can’t speak English, have low to average citation indexes (CIs) — and react contemptuously when they hear of CIs : I know a DR “of exceptional class” (the highest rank) whose most cited first-author paper generated three citations, with an overall CI of about 120 for a >30 years career; after 20-25 years, “first-class” DRs may have CIs as low as 250, four times lower than older CRs ; it has happened that a CR with a CI above 1000 postulated for promotion to DR in front of a panel whose DR members had lower to much lower CIs, and was turned down; etc. Many more examples would illustrate well how little promotion depends on scientific performance and impact in France, and how much it is based on a willingness and ability to become an apparatchik. Furthermore, the existence of a de facto nomenklatura controlling promotions makes that the system is partly plagued by clientélisme, a set of behaviours involving patronage, dependency relationships, and even pandering, again to the expense of scientific outcomes.
As long as the French science system does not make performance the very first requisite for individual promotion, I am afraid that its culture will remain essentially the same, and that its overall performance will decline. International science is now largely competitive, making production and impact first priorities, a fact that many French researchers, especially within the local nomenklatura, still fail to grasp or refuse to acknowledge. Immobilism has been abundantly reflected in the repeated failure of reforms (see Nature 444, 401, 23 November 2006). In my opinion, the first problem of French science is neither funding nor institutional organisation : it is its idiosyncratic culture.
Posted by: Thierry Sempere | April 25, 2007 03:42 PM