Grandstand. The beginnings of the presidential campaign come to illustrate to the point of caricature a worrying double paradox. While we entered the era of the knowledge economy more than twenty years ago, research is absent from the political debate. And, while the context of the pandemic summons science, too many of our fellow citizens, including in the political class, are unable to tell the difference between an opinion, on the one hand, and scientific knowledge produced by research, on the other hand. However, the need for a proactive policy in terms of scientific research is more essential than ever, for at least two combined reasons.
The first relates to the challenge of an unprecedented scale faced by all the countries of the planet: that of ecological transition. This can only be answered by combining sobriety and technological progress. However, promoting technological innovation presupposes strong support for basic research, which constitutes its fertile ground. Because it is indeed from this that the greatest technological breakthroughs are born, like the transistor and the laser, fruits of quantum physics.
In this respect, it is necessary to underline the narrow vision that political leaders often have of the world of start-ups, whether they set themselves up as thurifers or despisers. The former swear by French digital tech, where the latter castigate the “start-up nation”. They forget the technological start-ups with an industrial vocation, often from academic research laboratories, which bring breakthrough innovations for the energy transition, health or agriculture. It is true that their development time is long and requires a high capital intensity. To such an extent that they are struggling to find the means for their development in France. In the industrialization phase, they come up against the lack of appetite of investment funds, the reluctance of large industrial groups and the lack of vision of public authorities.
Halt the decline
However, this touches on the second reason which should encourage putting research at the heart of the presidential debate: the need for France to stem the spiral of its technological decline. The latter can in particular be read through indicators that illustrate: a massive deindustrialization of the country (manufacturing industry only represented 10.1% of GDP in 2017, i.e. twice less than in the mid-1970s and two times less than in Germany today); its growing dependence on foreign countries (its trade deficit is expected to reach a record level of 100 billion euros in 2022); a sharp deterioration in the performance of its students in scientific disciplines (France thus ranks last among European countries and penultimate among OECD countries in mathematics in the 2019 Timms survey).
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