But who is hiding behind the account Sj87420? This is the question that agitated the moderators of the free encyclopedia Wikipedia for several days. It all starts on Friday September 27, 2024, the day the famous account was created. Immediately afterwards, Sj87420 multiplies attempts to modify Patrick Hetzel’s Wikipedia pagethe new Minister of Higher Education and Research and attempts to delete passages detailing how he has, in the past and until recently, “taken positions far from scientific rationality”.
The fervor of Sj87420 is such that it triggers, between 10:01 a.m. – time of account creation – and 10:08 a.m., no less than six automatic “anti-abuse” and “anti-error” alerts from Wikipedia. The algorithms block changes after detecting “potential recurring redactions”, “section deletions” and “mass deletions by a new user”, as shown in the filter log. Contacted by L’Express, a “Wikipedia patroller” explains: “These filters aim to prevent people from creating new accounts for the sole purpose of modifying pagesthey serve to avoid beginner errors or gross vandalism.” And for good reason. “When an account only intervenes on a specific subject, the probability that there exists a conflict of interest between the subject and the account is big,” he continues.
Paragraphs deemed “insulting” and “defamatory”
By dint of effort, Sj87420 still manages to delete the entire of the part “Controversies over its relationship to science” from Patrick Hetzel’s page, i.e. two paragraphs, which the account considers it “controversial and defamatory”. The slashed passages indicate that Patrick Hetzel positioned himself, in April 2020 – in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis – in favor of the use of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and zinc, the treatment already criticized at the time but put forward by Professor Didier Raoult, the former director of the IHU of Marseille who has also just been banned from practicing medicine for two years by the disciplinary chamber of the Order of Physicians.
The paragraphs also recall that the minister has distinguished himself in the past by positions “very far from scientific rationality”, even “anti-science”. Among them, his sharing, still in 2020, of false information according to which euthanasia of people sick with Covid-19 was carried out illegally in French hospitals using Rivotril; his questioning of the anti-Covid vaccine policy; his support for homeopathy and alternative therapies and, more recently, his opposition to article 4 of the law against sectarian abuses targeting people who cause “abandonment or abstention of care”.
Sj87420’s victory was nevertheless short-lived. A minute later, a human moderator undoes the deletion. Sj87420 pleads: the section is “controversial, insulting and defamatory […] harms the reputation of the minister […] and emanates from extrapolations of information”, can we read in the archived discussions on the platform. The moderators counter that the section is “well supported by sources.” The criticisms are actually based on press articles, including one from Release and another from L’Express entitled “Patrick Hetzel, a Minister of Research angry with science”, published on September 23. “If the information is defamatory, we must attack the newspaper in question” or present “newspapers/a legal report which show that this information is indeed defamatory”, continue the moderators, who suspect a “conflict of interest”.
“What are your ties to Patrick Hetzel?”
On September 30, the mysterious account returns to the charge. This time he tries to add two new paragraphs more complimentary. It is based on an article from Parisian in which “the entourage of the Minister of Research” (understand, his ministerial office) calls not to “put on 2024 glasses to judge what was done in 2020”. Sj87420 adds that Patrick Hetzel’s April 2020 positions were made “at a time when France lacked masks, tests and vaccines” and “were not isolated”, or even that “the minister , since then, somewhat nuanced the reading of these publications of the time in the light of the knowledge that we now have” and finally that he “mobilized for the opening of three vaccination centers in his constituency”.
Scalded by the previous modifications and taken aback by the form, the moderators refused the addition for “obvious conflict of interest”, but also because the style used is “absolutely not encyclopedic”. A new, more lively discussion takes place. “I am stunned by this redaction [et] that you are talking to me about neutrality when we read the published paragraph which calls into question his intellectual and scientific probity”, launches Sj87420. “You still have not answered the most important question: what are your links with Patrick Hetzel?” asks a moderator. The request remains a dead letter.
“Indeed I intervened on this page”
The affair is growing enough for several curious Internet users to report it on social networks. Does Sj87420 have any ties to the ministry? Would S, J, be initials, and 87420, a postal code? Google searches make it possible to find the members of Patrick Hetzel’s cabinet and in particular a certain Sandrine Javelaud, appointed deputy director on Monday September 23. The latter was previously communications director for the city of Limoges (87000). On his Facebook profile, publicshe indicates that she lives in Saint-Victurnien, a town whose postal code is… 87420. Coincidences – even numerous – do not add up, L’Express therefore contacts the Minister of Research as well as his office.
A few minutes later, Ms. Sandrine Javelaud calls back. “It’s really me, I intervened on this page,” confesses the person concerned, before defending herself: “If I had wanted to hide myself, I would have taken a pseudonym like Pimprenelle and never would have confessed.” Why, then, not have revealed his identity to Wikipedia moderators, as required by the platform’s transparency rules? “I didn’t know Wikipedia’s modus operandi, mea culpa, and I didn’t know the moderators with whom I interacted,” she eludes. The director of the firm also mentions vehement comments from a Wikipedia user which would have reinforced her conviction not to reveal her identity.
“A Witchcraft Trial”
Also questioned about the passages she tried to delete and their defamatory nature, Sandrine Javelaud nuanced. “It is not the articles that are defamatory, but the way in which the sources are taken up and presented, when we know the scope of a Wikipedia page,” she assures, before returning to the slipped language elements At Parisian : “We are talking about a tweet from April 2020, when there was no mask, no test, no vaccine. He could have deleted his tweet, which many others did, but not him. “
The deputy director of the cabinet nevertheless maintains her position concerning the last lines of the “controversies” section. These cite the newspaper article Release who judges that Mr. Hetzel’s positions “reflect a fairly particular relationship to the sciences, to data from the sciences and to the methods of producing scientific knowledge” and questions “the scientific rigor, the understanding of the functioning of the sciences and the research [que l’on est] entitled to demand from a Minister of Research.” “You published an article without seeking the opinion of the Minister, but Release put him on trial for witchcraft!” Sandrine Javelaud is indignant. However, L’Express did request Mr. Hetzel’s parliamentary office as well as communication from the ministry. Without obtaining a response.
Sandrine Javelaud is finally surprised that her second intervention aimed at adding new paragraphs was refused. “I deleted a section, I was accused of redaction, I was asked to provide sources. Therefore, I come back to qualify and add details, since THE Parisian asked me, and I was told that it is not possible either, that it is promotional and not encyclopedic, even though I give the source,” she regrets.
On the Wikipedia side, the moderators are hardly surprised. “If you knewThe number of firms that attempt to redact pages by pretending to be young and nice beginners”, laments one of them. Sandrine Javelaud has, in any case, not managed to achieve her objective.
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