That science is prey to demons who would like to enslave it to an ideology, "reactionary" or "progressive," is unfortunately obvious. What becomes of scientific research in a world where a large part of people no longer "believe" in science and distrust it? Where everyone wants to flaunt their political, religious, or social convictions by pretending that they are based on science? Where scientists themselves compromise themselves with either activism or obscurantism—not to mention fraud? The simple acronym "CNRS" arouses in some what is fashionable to call a "moral panic." The CNRS, once a temple of research and scientific integrity, is now the crucible of major ideological deviations on the one hand, and an unacceptable tolerance of scientific fraud on the other: this gives it two major handicaps in its credibility in the eyes of public opinion.

However, this harsh judgment must be tempered. Yes to a thorough reform of the CNRS, no to its dismantling! In a business daily, Bernard Meunier, former president of the Academy of Sciences, proposed to rid it of the humanities and social sciences (HSS) to refocus it on the hard sciences. This would be a monumental error and one wonders what has bitten this eminent chemist, whose scientific output I do not even know, while everyone knows the immense wealth of work of the CNRS teams in the field of HSS, autonomous teams or established in universities, in the Écoles Pratiques des Hautes Études (EPHE and EPHESS) or at the Collège de France. Anthropology, sociology, linguistics, history, archaeology, philosophy, ancient and modern literature, comparative literature: these few names of disciplines in the humanities with multiple facets only imperfectly reflect the abundance of research carried out in the CNRS laboratories. Their research is recognized internationally and France is at the forefront in practically all fields. I would like it to be the same in chemistry! I have counted the silver medals awarded each year by the CNRS to its best researchers. Certainly, the hard sciences largely dominate. But from 1990 to 2024, I found 47 chemists and 90 researchers in SHS, almost double! And I didn't count economics among the SHS disciplines.

Yes, there are bad seeds at the CNRS, activists who use the prestige of the institution to brandish flags and cockades and pretend to ignore the principle of axiological neutrality which applies to all scientific work, as Nathalie Heinich reminded us in What activism does to research (Gallimard, 2021). There are also fraudsters and imposters who unfortunately benefit from great tolerance from the hierarchy, but scientific fraud is widespread in all institutions and is not the prerogative of the CNRS or of France. These flaws cannot authorize an emeritus research director, having worked in another section of the CNRS, to propose getting rid of his colleagues, many of whom are much more productive than him!

A group of researchers – active – answered him in a reasoned manner. Certainly, the SHS seem more porous to ideologies than the hard sciences: but the creationism to which Anne Dambricourt-Malassé, a paleontologist and researcher at the CNRS, adheres, the racism of James Watson (Nobel Prize for Medicine) and that of William Shockley (Nobel Prize for Physics), the lucubrations of Kary Mullis and those of Linus Pauling (both Nobel Prize for Chemistry), the excesses of Luc Montagnier and those of Harald zur Hausen (both Nobel Prize for Medicine), do they not testify to the ideological invasion of their brains ? The hard sciences have nothing to envy the SHS in this regard, and the argument doesn't hold water. And if we look at who, at the CNRS, was infiltrated by the ideology: it's the group of computer scientists who decided, with righteous clamour, to leave the X network for another using an automatic "app" who diverts state resources for militant purposes…If sociologists had dared to do that, we would surely have heard the hardliners rise up in protest!

Another argument is that the SHS are expensive in terms of personnel and that this deprives the hard sciences of the high-level instrumentation they need. Instead of asking for a substantial increase in the CNRS budget, it is surprising that Meunier is instead asking to eliminate the competition that the SHS poses to the hard sciences! It is a childish attitude to refuse to share one's (meager) snack with one's classmates on the grounds that they do not seem to be at the level at which one's ego is placed.