French ructions

The 2004 grassroots revolution among French researchers, culminating in the estates general held at the end of the year, highlighted the fact that the research structures in France are in dire need of reform (Curr. Biol. 14, R491–R492, R1031). While the spirit of the 2004 revolt has given way to the more quiet, laborious groundwork of structural change, there is still some disagreement over which changes should be made, and which new directions taken. This was highlighted in dramatic fashion this January, when the president of the CNRS, traditionally France's largest research agency, resigned in protest over the reform plans of the agency's director general, Bernard Larrouturrou, who in turn was removed by order of the government a week later. Up to this point, drastic changes to the way the CNRS runs its business were implemented relatively smoothly. Last spring, a new funding agency, the Agence Nationale pour la Recherche, ARN, was set up, which in the long term siphons up most of the research funding previously managed by the CNRS. Researchers at the CNRS units, often housed within universities, will only receive their salaries plus a negligibly small amount of money for the running of their research from CNRS. For any significant sum of money, project grants, postdocs, etc., they will have to send grant applications to the ARN. With this step, the CNRS has effectively lost control of the direction the research in its units will take. In contrast to this government line aiming at diminishing the CNRS and controlling research via the ARN, the ex-director general Larrouturrou tried to create a stronger and more independent CNRS (although possibly with a smaller overall size) which he modelled on Germany's Max-Planck Institutes. In a letter of 8 pages sent to all CNRS staff on his last day in office, Larrouturrou expresses his outrage over the behaviour of the government, which over two years seemed to support his reform plan, only to kick him out as soon as the departure of the president, who was known to be at odds with the more powerful director general, set the signal. With this step, the CNRS has effectively lost control of the direction the research in its units will take So what will be the new direction for the already diminished CNRS after this upheaval? For the time being, the government has made sure that the disagreement between director general and president …