In January 2020, INRA (the National Institute for Agricultural Research, created in 1946) and IRSTEA (the National Research Institute for Science and Technology for the Environment and Agriculture) merged to form INRAE (the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment), bringing together 12,000 researchers on national soil. The merger testifies to the institution’s interdisciplinary design, deeming that agronomic research cannot be conducted from an environmental viewpoint alone. Its comprehensive approach to the relationship between humans and their environment is illustrated by its contributions as a member of international research networks, through use of shared laboratories and infrastructures. Although the Institute chaired by Philippe Mauguin has a worldwide reputation, its commitment to scientific mediation is regionally and locally focused, thanks to the ties forged between its regional centres and local societal actors. As a partner of Science & You 2021, the INRAE Grand Est Centre in Nancy will be attending the professional forum set to be held at the Robert Schuman Congress Centre in Metz on 18 November. We met with Meriem Fournier, President of the INRAE Nancy Grand Est Centre.
In January 2020, the INRAE website’s headline read “We’ve never had so much need of research”. Over a year later, how would you assess the current situation in this regard?
It’s a long term need, obviously, in particular as regards INRAE’s fields of competence – agriculture, food and environment – and was by no means over and done with in 2020, quite the contrary. We can place increasingly less trust in our experience and practices in a world that is changing very/too quickly, with such phenomena as global warming interspersed with health, climate, economic and other crises. Research certainly can’t solve problems all on its own, but its potential for creativity and invention and, above all, its analytical and experimental capacities are needed in order to process information, anticipate crises and take the right decisions. The Covid pandemic and the IPCC’s latest report have made that clear enough once again in 2021. These days, everyone has limitless access to information thanks to the Internet. So anyone can demand to have a say in decision-making in a general climate of distrust of experts and the elite. If we wish to uphold the main principles of democracy, it’s essential to develop citizens’ skills so that all of them can make pointful contributions to ongoing debate. The power of experts and the elite must not be replaced by that of irrational emotions and networks of influence. The scientific approach is not a miracle solution to societal problems, but it promotes the values of rigour in analysis and information gathering, as well as transparency, which it’s essential to develop throughout society.
One of INRAE’s main objectives is development of participatory science and research, a collaborative approach enabling communication on the processes of scientific research, not just on its results. Is it a way of increasing citizens’ trust and interest in science?
These days, it’s not only one of INRAE’s main objectives, it’s also one of the Research Programming Law’s key goals and we welcome the fact. At the Grand Est-Nancy Centre, we’ve long been committed to participatory science alongside such academic partners as the University of Lorraine and associations involved in environmental education. Thanks to microbiologist Pascale Frey-Klett, INRAE’s Director of Research and creator of the “Tous chercheurs en Lorraine” platform, which has been operating for 10 years now, we are now acknowledged pioneers in the field, even though there is still very/too little recognition of the personnel involved and very/too few resources are allocated to it.
Our experience is that participatory science is practised at a variety of levels. With an initial focus on communication in order to improve citizens’ trust in what we believe in, the ability of public research to analyse and respond to problems to the benefit of society as a whole. And also a focus on co-creation that goes well beyond communication. Participatory research is possible when researchers can count on citizens’ skills in order to “do science” together. It starts with citizens helping to collect data, so increasing researchers’ access to information. But over and above such use of citizens as data collectors, participatory science can develop research questions of use to society that researchers would not have been able to come up with on their own. For example, in our CiTIQUE project on prevention of tick-borne diseases, it was thanks to citizens’ ideas that researchers began to study the roles that household pets play in transmitting and alerting on the progression of such diseases
We’ve also found that, in addition to its ability to create new knowledge, participatory science creates opportunities for inspiring human experiences. In our Tous Chercheurs workshops, secondary-school teachers get to know their pupils’ skills; pupils who may not be the best in the school system come to the fore and develop a passion for scientific discovery. Our citizen workshops get several generations between 8 and 80 working together, making the utmost of cooperation between a range of skills: participants who are good at inventing, formalising hypotheses and approaches, communicating results, and working with their hands (manual skills and practical intelligence are very important in research activities). Overall, such human interactions contribute a great deal to increasing citizens’ trust and interest in science.
How do you foster dialogue between citizens and scientists? Does it influence the “popularising” mediator’s role and missions?
There’s a whole way of teaching science that needs to be reinvented, not just at school but among all adult social classes, curious “citizens”, decision-makers and professionals alike. It requires new organisational models of interaction between researchers and the “general public”. We started with workshops for schoolchildren where the goal was to get them to discover the scientific approach to such major issues as water quality. We broadened our aims with the CiTIQUE project, organising workshops in which citizens took part in scientific discovery by analysing the infectious content of biting ticks collected by other citizens, and by participating in the formatting of groundbreaking scientific results. In addition to the highlights provided by our one-off workshops, there is also a focus on remote interaction via social networks, MOOCs and so on. It didn’t take long before our initial audience of schoolchildren and curious volunteers came to include entrepreneurs, who see the approach’s potential for innovation and development. Following our CiTIQUE laboratory workshops, we’ve just introduced new themes on soil quality and agroecological practices, intended for professional and amateur farmers. With the support of local authorities and the “Des Hommes et des Arbres” (Humans and Trees) innovation territory, we’re aiming to organise workshops on forestland in order to meet the high expectations expressed by the general public, landowners and professionals alike. In all cases, we draw on the help of community facilitators and mediators/facilitators with a sound grasp of the scientific approach (in no matter what discipline) and an ability to promote a change in position that deconstructs the scientist stereotype.
The main factor in these new science-society interactions is the change in the stance taken by researchers, who are no longer experts parading their science in front of a public that listens and learns, but rather individuals who share their knowledge and skills so that the collective intelligence, with all the diversity of its participants, commits to a creative scientific approach, with formulation of questions to solve and hypotheses, implementation of an approach based on experiment and observation, and analysis and publication of results. This change of stance requires “third-place”-type facilities. In this respect, our Tous Chercheurs infrastructure in Lorraine makes functional areas available, with tools for analysis and experimentation, a model of organisation and mediation.
It also requires formalisation of roles with the emergence of new professions. In this regard, as good scientists, we take a reflective approach in which participatory science becomes the subject of research in mediation and innovation sciences. We’ve started developing this approach at INRAE Grand Est Nancy in collaboration with teams from the University of Lorraine. Our strength is that we have long and varied concrete experience in participatory research practices.
In practical terms, I can only say that we need mediators and facilitators more than popularisers. Our experience is that these new professions and functions stimulate numbers of researchers put off by the “ivory tower detached from the real world” and “competition between peers” side of research. They provide attractive opportunities for certain young scientists who were trained by research but are more attracted by mediation.