In its response to listeners questioning the channel about keeping the scientist on the air, the management of France Culture recalls wearing “ strong attention to copyright protection issues “, a requirement that she judges ” all the more crucial at a time when artificial intelligence is profoundly disrupting the ecosystem of knowledge, its production and its dissemination ».
The decision is then formulated bluntly: “ Given the recent elements brought to our attention, we have made the decision not to renew The Scientific Conversation by Étienne Klein at the start of the next school year. » France Culture adds, however, that he wants “ salute his contribution à l’antenne « in terms of scientific popularization ».
This position comes after several questions from listeners, who considered it difficult to dissociate the radio presence of Étienne Klein from the university sanction. Messages emphasized the exemplary nature expected from a public service channel dedicated to knowledge. HAS” Plagiarism is a major ethical violation “, writes a person presenting themselves as a ” ordinary scientist, working in a university ».
Another listener thought it would be difficult to understand that “ recent decisions regarding the quality of its productions are not followed by effects on the France Culture channel ».
Étienne Klein had, for her part, reacted to X’s ending of the show. « The time has therefore come for me to thank the listeners from the bottom of my heart for their long loyalty. Making this show has been on the one hand a great honor, and on the other hand a colossal weekly pleasure. »
A case part of the thesis
The decision of France Culture continues a sequence opened by accusations of plagiarism targeting the doctoral thesis of Étienne Klein, defended in 1999 at the University of Paris-Diderot, which has since become the University of Paris Cité. This thesis was then published by Presses Universitaires de France under the title The Physics Unit.
After a journalistic investigation ofArrêt sur imagesthe university had opened an investigation. At the end of this procedure, the establishment withdrew Étienne Klein’s doctorate in philosophy of science and prohibited him from re-registering for a doctorate.
The passages in question concerned borrowings not reported to numerous authors, in proportions that the university investigation would then have expanded compared to the first findings. The accusations related to isolated sentences as well as paragraphs or pages repeated without quotation marks or clear attribution.
The matter did not arise entirely without precedent. As early as 2016, Étienne Klein had been implicated after revelations by L’Express on passages repeated without explicit attribution in The country where Albert Einstein lived, as well as in certain chronicles. He then recognized “ loans “, explaining that he integrated reading notes into his texts whose origin he may have forgotten.
In 2024, after new revelations around his thesis, he admitted having “ break some rules “, apologized and assured that it had changed its practices.
In a long speech recently published on X, the physicist mixed regrets, justification and criticism of what he perceived as an excessive focus on forgotten quotation marks. He stated in particular: “ I take full responsibility for what I did “, while explaining that he then considered acting ” as it should be done HAS”. It also referred the debate towards generative artificial intelligence and the transformation of the notion of authorship in the era of ChatGPT.
Photo credits: Étienne Klein (Yves Tennevin, CC BY-SA 2.0)
FILE – The National Library of France (BnF)
By Hocine Bouhadjera
Contact : hb@actualitte.com
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