“No one can simply bring together a country that has 265 kinds of cheese”; General Charles de Gaulle's exasperation with the French is probably shared this week by Claude Allègre, the country's science minister. This follows a rebellion in the scientific community over plans to put the country's fundamental research agency — the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) — on the road to becoming primarily a funding agency for university-based research, and giving universities joint responsibility for the running of CNRS laboratories (see page 607).

But Allègre has only himself to blame for the grass-roots challenge to his reforms. Over the past year, he has repeatedly — and unfairly — attacked CNRS as being solely responsible for all the woes of French science, and unnecessarily antagonized the national committee for scientific research, a sort of ‘parliament’ of scientists, by publicly describing it as a hotbed of nepotism and bureaucracy. He has also avoided direct consultation with representatives of the scientific community, pursuing reforms behind closed ministry doors.

It would be a mistake to dismiss the backlash that Allègre has provoked as merely a reflex defence of the status quo. It is not. The scientific community itself recognizes the need for change, and accepts that the proposed reforms contain some good ideas. But it is also worried that they smack of haste and authoritarian technocracy. In contrast, many researchers still cherish an idea of French science that involves collective input. These are making a legitimate demand for greater consultation in reaching agreement on what would constitute comprehensive and meaningful reforms.

Debate should not become an excuse for inaction, however, and Monday's show of force needs to translate quickly into concrete proposals for change. For his part, Allègre now needs urgently to find ways of involving the scientific community more broadly and openly in dialogue on how this can be achieved. If he is unwilling, his close friend, prime minister Lionel Jospin, should find a new science minister.