Science, politics and the media: the climategate disputes in France

Résumé En

Science is increasingly part of the public domain: scientific controversies, previously well protected from the public eye by the tacit rules which organize scientific communities since the XVIIth century, are more and more open to public inquisitiveness. There is a growing interdependence between science and politics. Political decisions must rely on scientific expertise while scientific and technological options and choices are evermore subject to political bargaining. The debate on climate change and global warming is a good example of this new direction in science history (history of science). This paper will deal with the most recent media events concerning the "climategate" in France. We shall start with the analysis of Claude Allègre's L'imposture climatique ou la fausse écologie, which was published in February 2010 and triggered a number of responses of all kinds in the media. C. Allègre is a well known geophysicist and former minister of education and research in the last socialist government. His climatoskeptical views were already well known and widely discussed in the media but his book appeared as the last straw. The French community of some 400 scientists, as different from each other as the disciplines and the specialities they represent, but all involved in the French branch (GIEC) of the IPCC, published a petition against the "lies" of Claude Allègre, asking their minister, Valérie Pécresse, as their employer, to reassert the scientific status and the seriousness of their work and to prevent further public diffusion of additional "lies" by Claude Allègre and his colleague, Vincent Courtillot. Allègre's crime according to the signatories of the petition is to have published under the cover of scientific background without peer control. This petition, in turn, was followed by numerous reactions in the media, generally condemning