Alerte sciences en danger Trial of the century #5 © Benoit Guillaume / Mucem

Science alert

Les Procès du siècle - Which way to the future?

  • Debate-
  • Meeting

Moderator: François Saltiel
With David Chavalarias (mathematician and writer) and Valérie Masson-Delmotte (climatologist, research director at CEA)

With the participation of Enguerrand Lascols, heritage curator, head of the Domestic Life department at Mucem.

Withdrawal of funding, redundancies, censorship of data: in the United States, certain areas of research and science are in such peril that they are referred to as an “anti-science crusade”. At the same time, conspiracy theories and fake news are fuelling mistrust of proven scientific truths.

Faced with the danger of new obscurantisms and threats to scientific independence, how should we react?


After the meeting, appointment at the Bookshop table-shop from Mucem for a signing session.


Biographies

  • François Saltiel - journalist, author, teacher, producer

    François Saltiel is a journalist, author, teacher and producer. Every morning on France Culture, he deciphers digital issues in his column A Connected World. From September 2025, he will be presenting a new program every Friday, “La Fabrique de l’information“, analyzing major media narratives and how opinion is shaped. Previously, he produced the program Le Meilleur des mondes for three seasons.

    A television journalist (28 minutes on Arte, C Médiatique on France 5), he is also co-founder of the production company Art2voir, which develops documentaries, podcasts and fiction. Since 2005, he has taught journalism and audiovisual production at Sorbonne Nouvelle and IFP Paris 2.

    In 2018, he published his first essay with Flammarion, Le Vendeur de thé qui changea le monde avec un hashtag, followed in 2020 by La Société du sans contact, selfie d’un monde en chute, and in August 2025, Faire la paix avec nos écrans with Virginie Sassoon, also with Flammarion.

  • David Chavalarias - mathematician, writer and CNRS research director

    David Chavalarias is a mathematician, writer and CNRS research director (EHESS/CAMS & ISC-PIF). His research focuses on social and cognitive dynamics, in particular using large-scale web data analysis. Since 2016, he has been developing tools for analyzing social networks, notably Twitter-X, to measure their impact on digital societies and democracies. He has published the highly acclaimed Toxic Data (Flammarion, 2022), which analyzes, with supporting graphics, how social networks can be used to manipulate opinions. And more recently, Elon Musk en 50 tweet (Seuil, June 2025).

  • Valérie Masson-Delmotte - Paleoclimatologist and CNRS researcher

    Valérie Masson-Delmotte, a world-renowned paleoclimatologist and CNRS researcher at CEA-Saclay’s Laboratoire des sciences du climat et de l’environnement, co-chaired Panel 1 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 2013 to 2023. In 2022, she was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people. Her work focuses on climate variability, the study of past climate variations (through the reconstruction of past climate changes, using polar ice and tree rings) and their impact on future climate. Throughout her career, she has become aware of the need to commit to the democratization and appropriation of scientific knowledge concerning climate change, and the levers of action that can be used to limit the risks.

Moderator: François Saltiel
With David Chavalarias (mathematician and writer) and Valérie Masson-Delmotte (climatologist, research director at CEA)

With the participation of Enguerrand Lascols, heritage curator, head of the Domestic Life department at Mucem.

Withdrawal of funding, redundancies, censorship of data: in the United States, certain areas of research and science are in such peril that they are referred to as an “anti-science crusade”. At the same time, conspiracy theories and fake news are fuelling mistrust of proven scientific truths.

Faced with the danger of new obscurantisms and threats to scientific independence, how should we react?


After the meeting, appointment at the Bookshop table-shop from Mucem for a signing session.


Biographies

  • François Saltiel - journalist, author, teacher, producer

    François Saltiel is a journalist, author, teacher and producer. Every morning on France Culture, he deciphers digital issues in his column A Connected World. From September 2025, he will be presenting a new program every Friday, “La Fabrique de l’information“, analyzing major media narratives and how opinion is shaped. Previously, he produced the program Le Meilleur des mondes for three seasons.

    A television journalist (28 minutes on Arte, C Médiatique on France 5), he is also co-founder of the production company Art2voir, which develops documentaries, podcasts and fiction. Since 2005, he has taught journalism and audiovisual production at Sorbonne Nouvelle and IFP Paris 2.

    In 2018, he published his first essay with Flammarion, Le Vendeur de thé qui changea le monde avec un hashtag, followed in 2020 by La Société du sans contact, selfie d’un monde en chute, and in August 2025, Faire la paix avec nos écrans with Virginie Sassoon, also with Flammarion.

  • David Chavalarias - mathematician, writer and CNRS research director

    David Chavalarias is a mathematician, writer and CNRS research director (EHESS/CAMS & ISC-PIF). His research focuses on social and cognitive dynamics, in particular using large-scale web data analysis. Since 2016, he has been developing tools for analyzing social networks, notably Twitter-X, to measure their impact on digital societies and democracies. He has published the highly acclaimed Toxic Data (Flammarion, 2022), which analyzes, with supporting graphics, how social networks can be used to manipulate opinions. And more recently, Elon Musk en 50 tweet (Seuil, June 2025).

  • Valérie Masson-Delmotte - Paleoclimatologist and CNRS researcher

    Valérie Masson-Delmotte, a world-renowned paleoclimatologist and CNRS researcher at CEA-Saclay’s Laboratoire des sciences du climat et de l’environnement, co-chaired Panel 1 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 2013 to 2023. In 2022, she was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people. Her work focuses on climate variability, the study of past climate variations (through the reconstruction of past climate changes, using polar ice and tree rings) and their impact on future climate. Throughout her career, she has become aware of the need to commit to the democratization and appropriation of scientific knowledge concerning climate change, and the levers of action that can be used to limit the risks.

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