On Scientific Whistleblowers: Legal Remarks and Proposals

Résumé 0

Precautionary principle, public right to know, scientific democracy or efficient risk governance, all these current evolutions lead to one and the same observation, viz. for public interest reasons, it is necessary that researchers widely disclose any ecological or sanitary risk they discover through their research. In fact, numerous mechanisms have been set up to this end in the last decade. Yet, “blowing the whistle ” remains a risky enterprise. Researchers often have to bear the brunt of their action, as reported by numerous scientists and analysed by some sociologists. For reasons of scientific caution or for economic reasons, their warnings are buried and forgotten. Worse: some of them are fired and sometimes banished and victimized. Should whistle blowers then be protected and, if yes, how? Although researchers have a right to freedom of expression, this freedom is far from being sufficient in practice, although recent law cases have sometimes recognized it as crucial in scientific fields when ecological or public health issues are at stake. As such rulings are still in the embryonic stage, specific legal rules need to be devised. On the basis of recent laws and regulations adopted in this perspective by several foreign states in recent years, the present article makes some proposals that attempt to articulate two major requirements: protecting true whistleblowers while preventing the growth of an “alert society ”.