French researchers press for reform

clearly assigned to one of the three main social classes by their clothing, it was both a parade of the old world order and the signal for the most radical change in history. The third estate (i.e. everybody who didn't belong to the nobility or clergy) had fought for and obtained 600 places in the assembly, but, as the privileged classes insisted on block votes by estates, equality in the head count didn't increase the influence of the common people by one iota. Within days, the third estate marched out of the Estates General and declared itself the National Assembly, setting the ball rolling for the French Revolution. Some two centuries later, the Estates General of Research were held at Grenoble in the French Alps at the end of October. While the powerful and the powerless can no longer be distinguished by the presence or absence of feathers in their hats, disagreement and mutual mistrust is still the order of the day, especially if it comes to discussions on the current crisis and future prospects of French science. Earlier this year, the successful protest movement 'Sauvons la Recherche' (SLR) forced the government to concede significant financial and structural improvements (Curr. Since then, an unprecedented grassroots exercise has taken place. Local committees of research staff all across the country assembled to discuss the changes they want to see included in the radical reform of the entire research system that most observers consider inevitable. On the national level, the Comité d'Initiative et de Proposition (CIP) founded by Édouard Brézin and Étienne-Émile Baulieu, who had acted as mediators between researchers and politicians, coordinated the exercise and funnelled the results into a 70-page document entitled 'Proposals to improve the French research system', which was presented to the national assembly at Grenoble. (Available online from http://cip-etats-generaux.apinc.org/) The document makes detailed proposals for change in four key areas: organization and structure of science policy; universities and research institutes; funding and evaluation; and job security and career development. Among the structural changes proposed are the creation of a full ministry for science, technology and higher education. With respect to universities and research institutes, the paper recommends opening up the structural separations between the major research bodies (such as CNRS, INSERM) and the higher education system. However, it stops short of adopting the more radical proposal from an earlier report of the Académie des Sciences to create a …