Will French Science Swallow Zerhouni's Strong Medicine?

摘要

Dull moments have become rare in French science and higher education. Since President Nicolas Sarkozy took office 18 months ago, heavily contested reforms have come at a frenetic pace. Still, most were child's play compared with what a high-rnwattage international committee prescribed in a surprisingly blunt report released on 13 November. The panel, led by former U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Elias Zerhouni, proposes a massive overhaul of French life sciences research that would create a single, strong funding agency and likely spell the death of several existing institutes. The government has welcomed the report as an endorsement of its own reformist program. Speaking at the 120th anniversary of the Pasteur Institute 2 weeks ago, research minister Valerie Pecresse promised Zerhouni-who grew up in Algeria and is fluent in French-that the proposals would "not remain a dead letter." But trade unions are up in arms, andrnSauvons la Recherche, a left-wing researchers' movement that has fought the recent changes every step of the way, says it read the report with "astonishment" and "alarm."