[Éditorial] McDonald’s Science

May is traditionally a month to celebrate science in French thanks to the great sound of the Acfas conference. With 100 years to go, Acfas mine appears more anxious than happy. It is because the decline of Molière’s or Tremblay’s or Senghor’s language has accelerated so much that it now seems like a free fall. Hard science and soft science combined.

Published on the eve of the great scholarly liturgy, Analysis of grant applications over the past 30 years Radio-Canada enabled to confirm a stubborn hunch. Not only do francophone researchers have fewer resources, but their projects are often shunned in favor of those who speak English. And not a little. For example, of all grants awarded by the three federal agencies that fund research in the country, 95% were awarded to projects written in English, between 2019 and 2022.

Don’t be fooled by the next generation. She could see the rug slipping under her feet. In a recent letter to duty, Quebec’s chief scholar, Rémy Kerion, conveys the fundamental questions that trouble doctoral and postdoctoral scholarship holders from the Fonds de Recherche du Québec, which he directs. If they do not deny the essential nature of the French language, these scholars point out that it can quickly become a hurdle when it comes to publishing or advancing in a competitive environment like theirs.

This is how he writes only 15% or mainly in French. We cannot blame these young researchers for wanting to advance their work. We cannot even ask them to bear on their shoulders the weight of the necessary battle to be fought in order to put an end to these intolerable linguistic double standards.

Unfortunately, the letter did not arrive. Last February, again to the text published in dutyBloc Québécois MP Maxime Blanchette-Joncas took to keyboard to worry about the fact that “Mary Victorine’s language is dying in science” at the federal government’s general indifference to “absence of subscribers”.

in March , Federal Research Support System Advisory Committee added layer. In a scathing report, he deemed it “essential” to treat—and support—applications to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Research Engineering Council of Canada, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council—with exactly the same openness and energy. Whatever their language.

But finger tapping by donor agencies has little effect. Nor is the $8.5 million over five years earmarked to support the creation and dissemination of scientific information in the French language that Trudeau’s government announced last month. It is imperative that Canada adopts a strong national strategy to support French-language research before French-speaking researchers abdicate completely.

The Trudeau government must also look beyond coast to coast. La Francophonie has more than 320 million speakers spread all over the world. I hope he gets the most out of it. This coming June, Montreal will host a summer school on science diplomacy, a recent but promising concept, and the time has come to give it a boost first and foremost in Ottawa.

He will not be alone in this field. French isn’t the only language in the woods on the global scientific chessboard. Many other languages ​​are in decline before English. Yet, behind the ease—and the difficult, faltering advantages—that publishing in a lingua franca can have right now, there is more than one tragic series of cultural erasures. The decline of polyglot science is actually a sign of the decline of science, period.

to The French Science Agency, which devotes an excellent dossier to the regression of French science Beneficiary of the Acfas conference, linguist Anne-Claude Bertaud explains that global communication is an illusion that ends up impoverishing knowledge and the quality of scientific knowledge. She calls this phenomenon “McDonaldization” for science. A disease that can be cured… Multilingualism! We don’t go out.

To this remedy, the recipients of the Young Mr. Quirion Scholarship added the creation of a network to promote the dissemination and mobility of knowledge in the Francophonie. It is also necessary, they say, to improve funding for francophone journals and publishers of scholarly knowledge and to increase effective translation tools. We applaud.

In the face of the enormous challenges facing the planet, starting with the climate emergency, it seems imperative to preserve a living knowledge whose ingenuity can only thrive in the diversity of languages ​​and cultural sensitivities. We won’t get there if we all take the same mindset.

Let’s see in the video