Enough. That’s what some 1000 lab directors from across France were telling their government when they resigned en masse from their administrative responsibilities on 9 March. Enough budget cuts. Enough job reductions. Enough loss of autonomy.
In resigning—from their administrative duties only, not from their scientific positions—the researchers were carrying out a threat made in a petition to the government. The “Sauvons la Recherche” (save research) petition says that “fundamental research is currently being abandoned by the state.” It also says, among other things, that maintaining a topflight research capacity is essential; that targeting only specific research areas is untenable; that without fundamental research, applied research will collapse; and that, if the government does not act quickly, young scientists will make their careers elsewhere, and France will lose the capacity to train the next generations of scientists. In the two months between 7 January, when it was first posted on...
