During the Covid-19 pandemic, he was one of the most media opponents of Didier Raoult, trying to defend rational speech on television. But rather than returning directly to the abuses of the Marseille professor, Patrick Cohen chose to revive past scientific scandals, which offer disturbing echoes with the hydroxychloroquine affair. In the great documentary Mystifications, broadcast Sunday at 8:55 p.m. on France 5, the journalist recounts the controversy of ciclosporin, presented in 1985 as a miracle drug against AIDS, that of the memory of water in 1988, supposed to revolutionize molecular biology (and justify the homeopathy), the climatoscepticism that raged in the 2000s, as well as the lyssenkism which, in Stalin’s Soviet Union, had genetics banned in the name of communist ideology. Almost every time, we find a renowned scientist (Philippe Even, Jacques Benveniste, Claude Allègre) persuaded to be right against the rest of the scientific community, and who was supported by the media as well as politicians. The documentary is served by a fine cast (Jean-François Delfraissy, our columnists Gilles Pialoux and Etienne Klein, the historian Stéphane Courtois…). Interview.
L’Express: Why did you want to come back to scientific mystifications, from the Soviet Trofim Lyssenko to the memory of water?
Patrick Cohen: As I spoke a lot during the Covid-19 on scientific disinformation and fake medical news, we had the idea of making a documentary on great scientific deceptions. I told myself that we had to focus on a few illustrious cases, which have a lot of echoes with the Covid crisis.
Our director Dimitri Queffelec has done a wonderful job, directing stories that haven’t necessarily been illustrated very much. On Lyssenko there are few archives. I had vivid memories of the water memory affair in 1988, but there are few interviews with Jacques Benveniste for television. It was much more of a print media controversy. But thanks to the multiplicity of speakers, we arrived at a narrative that I believe grabs the viewer.
In red wire of all the documentary, one finds Didier Raoult and the hydroxychloroquine case…
I found it interesting to see how history repeats itself. Mandarin behavior in particular is fascinating. Champion of climatoscepticism in France, Claude Allègre proclaimed on television sets that he was a very great teacher and that his detractors did not come close to his ankle. But he was a specialist in geology, not climate! These same arguments of authority are found in various polemics. The difference is that the impact of Covid-19 on people’s lives has been infinitely stronger…
At the time of the ciclosporin affair in 1985 or the memory of water in 1988, there were no social networks either…
Their role is contrasted. Social networks also spread scientific and rational words. I got a lot of information via social networks during the Covid-19 pandemic. I found scientists spreading serious information and knowledge through tweets or blogs.
“There is a real mystery Claude Allègre”
You were one of the most media and early critics of Didier Raoult. What motivated you?
By chance I had met and interviewed Didier Raoult. He had come to It’s up to you for his book The truth about vaccines published in 2018. I knew a little about the subject of vaccines, it is a cause that I have always defended. In his book, Raoult assured that we vaccinated too much, especially against polio. This gave rise to a muscular exchange where he said to me “you don’t know anything about it”. I had therefore practiced the gentleman, and I had formed an idea of the character.
Suddenly, I saw his name reappear at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The day after his release announcing that it would be the easiest viral infection to treat, he was interviewed on Europe 1 at 7:40 a.m. I arrived in the editorial office in the morning, and I told them “be careful”. At that time, however, I was unaware of the enormity and prosperity of the machine he had assembled, entirely under his command. The Marseille IHU was supposed to be the beacon of French medical research, having cost hundreds of millions of euros. But no one knew.
I can’t read a scientific study, but I can read people who can read a scientific study. Very quickly, contacts and researchers alerted me to the lack of seriousness of Raoult’s studies on hydroxychloroquine. When we take a group in Marseille and the other in Nice, or we eliminate the patients who are going to die, it’s laughable.
Didier Raoult then enjoyed great popularity and had fierce defenders on social networks. Was the period violent for you?
I protect myself. I don’t have an account in my name on Twitter or Facebook. What you shouldn’t do, and what I rarely do, is type your name on the networks to see what comes out. But I also noticed the audience for my video capsules, proof that there is an audience for critical and rational speech. The most important thing is that I was not alone. Many journalists have done a wonderful job during this pandemic: The world, The Express, Point, Release, Le Figaro… Many have realized what was happening in Marseille, and the way Raoult made reign a form of terror.
In your documentary, we find renowned researchers who, at some point, have fallen into the belief that they have found a miracle drug or revolutionized their field. How to explain it? Is it the ego?
Trofim Lyssenko is apart. He is a basic agronomist who, thanks to Stalin, manages to dominate biology in the Soviet Union and have genetics considered “bourgeois” banned. But otherwise, Philippe Even, Jacques Benveniste, Claude Allègre are scientists who were renowned in their field. Initially, they are anything but impostors. Except that some are out of their area of expertise. This is the typical case of Claude Allègre, a geophysicist who knew nothing about the bowels of the earth, but was completely wrong about the climate. Besides, there is a real Allègre mystery. Did he actually believe what he was saying in denying man-made global warming? What was the theater part? In the documentary, the journalist Stéphane Foucart also hypothesizes that geologists could be more conducive to speaking out against climate change, due to links with the oil industry.
In 1985, pulmonologist Philippe Even thought he could treat AIDS with ciclosporin, usually used against transplant rejection. Today he continues to correspond with people who are convinced that ciclosporin can be used to cure HIV. He doesn’t say it’s a miracle cure, but still thinks the idea was good.
Jacques Benveniste is a figure that is less familiar to us today. It is the most elusive of all. A brilliant researcher, he had a tragic end following the memory of water, which completely discredited him in the eyes of the scientific community. The physicist Claude Hennion who, at the request of Nobel Prize winner Georges Charpak, had been commissioned to verify Benveniste’s experiments, recounts how he was in complete denial. There was a loss of lucidity very difficult to explain. Knowing that it was not just a symbolic issue. The memory of water was potentially proof of the effectiveness of homeopathy.
“No doubt Macron was struck by Raoult’s ego explosion…”
You also underline the political recoveries, like Georgina Dufoix, then Minister of Social Affairs, who was associated with the premature announcement of the effectiveness of ciclosporin in 1985 for AIDS patients. In the same way, should Emmanuel Macron have avoided going to Didier Raoult’s office in Marseille?
It was a fault. But I don’t believe he provided bail for Raoult. Macron did it to calm the raging raoultphiles on social media. He probably also moved to form his own opinion. No doubt he was struck by the character’s outburst of ego and rudeness. Even if we are not a specialist in infectiology, we could see that we were facing a scientist seriously lacking in humility…
None of the many politicians who defended Didier Raoult have since made a mea culpa…
Everyone remembers Macron’s visit, which was a strong act. But I remember a Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, who refused to utter words of condemnation or banishment which were nevertheless necessary against Raoult. The laissez-faire has lasted too long, while there have been unacceptable behaviors and excesses, both in Raoult’s public statements and on social networks. I think that politicians did not want to further alienate the clique of worshipers of the Marseille professor.
Le Monde put the memory of water on the front page, L’Express then Le Point offered a column to Claude Allègre, the Nouvel Observateur devoted a cover to a study by Gilles-Eric Séralini on the supposed toxicity of GMOs which will be widely disavowed… Are the media also responsible for these scientific drifts?
This shows that we did not wait for the news channels to hype dissenting and marginal opinions. The function of the journalist is to try to produce truths. But the economic model of the media is to manufacture controversy. In this context, scientific consensus sells much less than scientific controversy. In the name of pluralism, we give a voice to everyone, by putting 99% of researchers who agree on a subject on the same level, and a marginal opinion carried by an isolated scientist. These mechanisms, very present on the news channels, already existed even in the most serious written press. Moreover, the documentary reminded me of the violence of face-to-face encounters between Claude Allègre and climatologists like Jean Jouzel and Valérie Masson-Delmotte in talk shows of the time.
During the Covid-19 crisis, it became clear to me that scientists and journalists have the same function in society, that of producing knowledge. Journalism must be based on verification, validation, prioritization, which is similar to the scientific approach. Obviously, this does not mean that journalistic production has scientific value. But there is something similar here.
Finally, there is one last common point: impunity. The cyclosporine affair did not prevent Philippe Even from enjoying a successful university career. Similarly, journalists who have told nonsense hardly suffer the consequences.
Do you think we have learned lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic?
The rationalist camp still has some arguments for the next crisis. We must look at the studies with caution, beware of gurus who advance arguments of authority. But if we are vaccinated against a Didier Raoult, we may still need a few reminders, hence this documentary (smile).