Did the US boycott of French products spread to include scientific output?
BMJ 2004; 329 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.329.7480.1430 (Published 16 December 2004) Cite this as: BMJ 2004;329:1430
- Bernard Bégaud, professor of pharmacology (bernard.begaud@pharmaco.u-bordeaux2.fr)1,
- Hélène Verdoux, professor of psychiatry1
- 1 EA 3676, IFR99 of Public Health, Université Victor Segalen Bordeaux 2, Bordeaux, France
- Correspondence to: B Bégaud, Bâtiment Présidence, Université Victor Segalen Bordeaux 2, 33076, Bordeaux cedex, France
The French opposition to military intervention in Iraq induced a marked anti-French protest in the United States, leading to a boycott of French products. This phenomenon began in February 2003, peaked in early March 2003 after the French veto at the United Nations Security Council, and has continued ever since. During this period, there was a persistent rumour among French researchers that the boycott of French goods had spread to include scientific output—that is, that US journals were tending to reject manuscripts submitted by French research groups. As the rumour was based on subjective impressions and not on any numerical evidence, we investigated whether the proportion of French papers published in leading US journals differed in the periods before and after the French veto.
Methods and results
To avoid any suspicion about the choice of the journals to be investigated, we restricted the analysis among weekly journals to …