The Life of the Labs. Ghosts haunted the second symposium of the French Office for Scientific Integrity (OFIS), which was held at the Collège de France on June 9. Their names were rarely mentioned, but the allusions were sufficiently clear for the participants to grasp that they most certainly owed their presence at these discussions on “Speaking by researchers in the public space” to these “absentees”. : what new challenges for scientific integrity? “.
The Covid-19 epidemic has indeed “increased the visibility of scientists in traditional media and social networksrecalled in the introduction Stéphanie Ruphy, director of OFIS. And we believe that issues of scientific integrity and good practice don’t stop at the lab gates. In other words, some may have slipped. And the figures of Didier Raoult or the sociologist Laurent Mucchielli, two of the “ghosts”, illustrate all the complexity of a subject which mixes scientific or non-scientific positions, broadcast in traditional channels or not, and with virulent exchanges on Twitter.
If the day did not decide their case, it was an opportunity to show that there are many sites. Several lawyers have thus recalled the two regimes of freedoms that apply to researchers. Academic freedom, which is the condition for exercising their profession. And freedom of expression, a human right, which applies to all citizens. The second is less limited than the first, which obeys rules of integrity and ethics. Australian jurist Adrienne Stone has also pointed out that academic freedom contains the right to criticize the institution, which the latter sometimes forgets. Furthermore, one of the few consensuses in the room was the rejection of new regulations that could hamper academic freedom. Adrienne Stone has also shown that in addition to these two regimes, we must distinguish three modes of engagement of scientists, who can intervene as intellectuals, activists or experts, which comes under freedom of expression, but cannot be judged with exactly the same look.
Negative consequences on citizens
But these definitions are not enough to decide. For the Canadian sociologist Yves Gingras, a peer-to-peer argumentation response can be enough to make researchers who go astray lose their credibility, and therefore to make them “to die socially”. To which Olivier Le Gall, president of the Integrity Council of the OFIS, retorted that some draw an argument from social discredit to argue that they are right. Epidemiologist Dominique Costagliola, victim of insults on Twitter for his positions concerning anti-Covid treatments, for her part stressed that these misleading words could have negative consequences on citizens, before being discredited.
You have 34.11% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.