Help French Research

[Gervaise Mosser]

Dear Colleague,

Please let me inform you about the major disaster that hangs over the 
scientific community in France. As you know France remains one of the best 
countries in the world for its research in the sciences. Unfortunately this 
situation is about to change. Despite official statements claiming that 
research is a national priority, the French Government plans to drastically 
shrink the public research sector, by financially asphyxiating public 
research institutions. Moreover, decreased funding is also associated with 
a severe reduction in the number of public positions for young researchers, 
which coincides with a massive wave of retirement among senior French 
researchers. At the same time Government projects to divert the funds to 
favor Applied Research, thus undermining Fundamental Research. Obviously 
the consequences of such a decision will be devastating for Science at large.

To protest against this dismantling of French Research, an initiative 
called "Sauvons la Recherche" (Save Research) has been launched. This 
movement involves lab directors, members of Public Scientific or Technical 
Institutions, like CNRS or INSERM, and university professors and research 
assistants. In an open letter to the Government from January 7, 2004 
(already supported by more than 200000 researchers and non researchers 
signatures !), petitioning directors of research units and teams have 
already collectively resign all administrative duties if Government do not 
pay research agencies the millions of euros it owes them, to boost 
recruitment of young scientists and to launch a national debate on science.

Due to this pressure, the Government has recently decided to pay back the 
debt it already owed from 2002 to the scientist community. However this 
measure cannot be considered as a real investment in Research ! In this 
context, we think that positive evaluations of the French contribution to 
Research from our foreign colleagues would be of great importance. We would 
thus be grateful if you could express your appreciation of the quality of 
the French Science and your concern about this planned destruction of our 
research capacity on our website :

http://recherche-en-danger.apinc.org/article.php3 ?id_article=222.

Thank you so much for your help.


Sincerely Yours,

Gervaise MOSSER.


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Soutenez le mouvement SAUVONS LA RECHERCHE : 
http://recherche-en-danger.apinc.org/
_______________________________________________________________________==============================================================
Gervaise MOSSER
Equipe Matériaux du Vivant
LCMC, UMR7574-CNRS-UPMC-EPHE
12 rue Cuvier
75005 PARIS

Tel/fax: 00 33 (0)1.44.27.65.53
e-mail : Gervaise.Mosser at snv.jussieu.fr
http://www.ccr.jussieu.fr/lcmc/MatBio/WebNetscape/Accueil.html



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