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A leaked report has heightened tensions between researchers at the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the ministry of national education, research and technology.

Chambon: draft was ‘a working document’. Credit: HENRY PARENT

The draft assessment of CNRS was leaked to the newspaper Le Monde last week. It was written by the chair of an external visiting committee, the eminent French biologist Pierre Chambon; other members of the panel include David Baltimore, president of the California Institute of Technology, and Sir Ronald Oxburgh, rector of London's Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine.

Its contents have been reported as questioning the lifelong job security enjoyed by CNRS researchers. Many scientists are already suspicious that planned reforms by the ministry will result in the agency being dismantled (see Nature 396, 607; 1998).

Chambon has been quick to play down the conclusions of the report, arguing that it is only a “working document” that contained no radical new insights beyond the widely acknowledged lack of mobility in the French research system and the difficulties faced by young researchers in setting up independent laboratories in a system dominated by established scientists.

“No member of the committee recommended dispensing with the civil-servant status of researchers,” Chambon emphasizes. He argues that, at most, the report supports the widely floated idea of creating a single corps of researcher/lecturers whose time allocated to research and teaching duties would vary during their career according to their productivity.

Meanwhile, several members of the committee are said to be annoyed that Chambon circulated a draft they had not approved. Although members commented on a first draft, they had not seen the circulated version taking these comments into account. Chambon says the new draft was not intended to be published or made public, but was sent to CNRS and the ministry to test whether it was likely to be acceptable.

Oxburgh, who confirms that he had not seen the draft, says, “CNRS is an organization with a tremendous tradition and has produced some outstanding science. They have the problems inherent in any organization that appoints people for life for the sole purpose of doing research.”