“A scientific and industrial suicide”

The French government just dropped a bomb in the French research community. Indeed, a new draft decree canceled 256 million euros destined to research in 2016. It represents a budget cut of ~25%, which will affect leading research organizations like inter alia the CEA (Alternatives Energies and Atomic Energy Commission), the CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research), and the INRA (Agronomic Research Institution).

Eight French leading scientists (7 Nobel laureates and 1 Fields medalist) stood up to protest against this decision comparable to “a scientific and industrial suicide”. This will lead to an inevitable drop out of the French scientific research in many highly competitive domains. Moreover, the very same day, the German government announced a 75% budget increase for research over 10 years.

Let’s hope that the French government hears this call and stops this nonsense because “there is no prosperous nation without a high-quality scientific research”.