French scientists confronted with Trump’s obscurantism | EUROtoday

On missions sometimes spanning ten years, one might think that a set -time for a few months is anecdotal, it is not. Launched in October 2018, Bepicolombo is only two years of mercury, its final goal. In other words, a chip on a global travel scale to the first planet of the solar system. However, a long-term conference in the United States in early February was canceled at the very last moment, preventing the hundred and fifty scientists involved from preparing this crucial phase of the program.

For its part, if Laetitia Le Deit can still continue to work on the Chemcam, a Franco-American instrument installed on the Rover Curiosity to analyze the composition of the rocks of Mars, it is not sure to be able to do it with the same interlocutors in the future.

Read too How Trump and Musk sabotage medical research “For the second, our accreditations to NASA are maintained and we will nonetheless take part in teleconferences and operations, however for our American colleagues, it turns into sophisticated,” notes the lecturer in Martian geology. Thus, for the first time, some of them did not get the green light to go to the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC), the great annual raout on planetary exploration, which takes place from this Monday, March 10 in Texas.

The Nantesaise knew her at the bend of a conversation, and especially not by email, a discussion channel now dismissed. With her colleagues across the Atlantic, “we’re now not sending emails on our skilled addresses as a result of it leaves traces,” she says.

Scientific asylum in France?

In some cases, unfortunately, the contact is no longer established, the corresponding correspondent having been dismissed without notice, under the cover of economy. “They refer those who cost the cheapest, therefore the youngest. These are the brains of tomorrow that we turn! “Indigates Mary Elliot, who is considering a type of scientific asylum.

“We are beginning to discuss it between us and really clearly, I believe Europe shall be a possible host land for these American researchers. “For their French counterparts wishing to cross the Atlantic in turn to perfect their doctorate,” they must search different international locations “, anticipates Benoît Langlais, leader of the LPG.

Will they have access to the same sources as yesterday? It is the other great fear that agitates all scientific circles when certain data would have already been modified or simply purged of several institutional sites. Unsurprisingly, they are mainly relating to climatic issues.

Read too Why Europe must be “extra aggressive” with authoritarian regimes “This is the true hazard, shudder Olivier Grasset, vice-president of the Faculty of Nantes, within the Department of Earth Sciences and the Universe. To cease a program is already critical, however we will take it again. Delete information, we take it for 50 years, and that’s dramatic! »»

To uncover



The kangaroo of the day

So, even when many of the information from worldwide analysis will not be significantly threatened, a type of save-who continues to be organizing, discreetly however certainly, to exfiltrate others, extra weak, in a protected place. “People tell us: we have these things, we are ready to shelter them elsewhere. Some in Europe are starting to look at how we can help them save their research analyzes, ”reveals Laurent Desvime.

So goes science in the country of Donald Trump. After denial during the COVID years, now places the obscurantism that plunges laboratories from around the world into amazement. “An nearly in every single place, scientific truths and approaches are questioned, and it’s a hazard for our societies,” concludes Olivier Grasset.