Battles Over Reform of French Research -- CNRS Medallist Voices a Successful Call to Arms. (July 10, 2008)

Credit: Nature -- F. STUCIN/MYOP

31-year-old researcher Claire Lemercier, a lecturer at the Parisian École Normale Supérieure, is the latest recipient of the top medal for promising young researchers, an annual Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) award, her employer.

In an interview Dr Lemercier told Nature that the award: "immediately made me think of the orchestra playing on as the ship sinks," referring to the intention of the French government to create some eight separate institutes to replace the CNRS, a move seen by many as an attempt to dismantle the organisation and gain greater direct control of its personnel (see: Battles Over Reform of French Research Set to Continue).

In a call to arms to her fellow medallists to protest "aspects of the CNRS reforms, and a lack of staff and budgetary resources to implement them. she gained over 450 signatures "including the cream of French science".

As a result, troops were rallied and the French newspaper Libération devoted a full page to Dr Lemercier, under the headline "Gunslinging chick".

There is little doubt that the effect was the protest of June 19 and the subsequent concessions of science minister Valérie Pécresse saving the CNRS from immediate dismantling. Nevertheless the reformation of creating separate national institutes remains but the government has guaranteed that all CNRS disciplines will be represented. "This concession is really important, although we are still worried about how it will pan out concretely in practice," Dr Lemercier told Nature.

Furthermore, it has now been agreed that the CNRS, not the government, will appoint the heads of the proposed institutes, and CNRS will be fully responsible for planning and managing the institutes, which in turn will run their own laboratories.

Finally, the institutes will be empowered to act as research councils, giving grants to outside labs, something many researchers welcome, Lemercier told  Nature.