“We wanted to step aside. With Mystifications, an in-depth documentary broadcast Sunday at 8:55 p.m. on France 5, Patrick Cohen sheds light on the news by returning to the history of four emblematic medical and scientific scams. A way to give food for thought, without getting engulfed in the controversy over Didier Raoult, whose journalist was one of the stubborn opponents during the Covid crisis.

From ciclosporin, an anti-rejection drug presented in 1985 as the miracle cure for AIDS, to the memory of water, a hypothesis put forward in 1988 by doctor Jacques Benveniste, supposed to revolutionize molecular biology and justify homeopathy, via Trofim Lyssenko, an agricultural engineer holding under Stalin a communist “science” denying the laws of genetics, the film endeavors to highlight the roles played by politicians, the media and scientists in these runaway phenomena.

It also questions, notably through the figure of Claude Allègre, geologist and former Minister of National Education, who became the spearhead of climatoscepticism in the 2000s, the approach of these recognized scientists who emancipate themselves from all scientific rigor.

Supported by archival footage and quality speakers, including Jean-François Delfraissy, historian Stéphane Courtois and journalist and former director of Le Point, Franz-Olivier Giesbert, each story illuminates, without judgment, the mechanisms and the history of these controversies, in a disturbing echo with the present. Interview with Patrick Cohen, for whom this film is “a useful reminder”.

Le Point: What is the genesis of this film project?

Patrick Cohen: There was a desire from France Télévisions and the production of C à vous, to have me work on a documentary on misinformation, fake news, big stories of media deception. I spontaneously proposed to tighten up on scientific and medical mystifications. I thought it was interesting to revisit these stories, known or forgotten, which resonate with the news of the Covid crisis, and in particular on an anti-science offensive that everyone has in mind. As we worked on each of these stories, we realized, ultimately, that there was a lot of commonality with what we’ve been through over the past few years. It allows us to reflect on what is happening today.

Didier Raoult’s hydroxychloroquine controversy indeed appears implicitly in the examples you develop in this film. How did you experience it as a journalist?

Yes, his face is present, but that’s not the subject of the documentary. We have clearly chosen a side step. I did not see myself, especially at a time when justice was seized, once again making the film that everyone has in mind. But the Covid period has been an exciting time. You had to learn, educate yourself before trying to pass on your knowledge to others, choose your sources and interlocutors carefully, surround yourself with people who know how to read studies and observe the evolution of the epidemic… I made sure at all times to surround myself with trusted scientific and medical advice, as this was a time of great uncertainty. Being neither a doctor nor a scientist, it was necessary to progress with humility. But I immediately felt mistrust, and caution, towards those who claimed to hold the truth, with studies carried out in a hurry. I also protected myself, for example by not being present on social media…

In the documentary, each of the controversies is carried, each time, by established scientists, who suddenly come out of the nails… Are they above all stories of men and ego?

There are individual drifts, of course. Suddenly, men with a solid scientific and academic reputation choose to deviate from the scientific method, to free themselves from ethics to carry out experiments, sometimes without the consent of the patients, or without respecting the rules of the contradictory . It’s interesting to watch, but it’s hard to judge: these personalities are elusive. Philippe Even, the pulmonologist behind ciclosporin, testifies, for example, in the film: I do not allow myself to doubt his good faith. It is difficult to generalize, but there is obviously an element of ambition and ego, the dream of attaching one’s name to a great discovery…

What is certain is that they are always recognized professors, who are not charlatans, but who go out of their field of competence to deliver authoritative arguments in another field. This is what Claude Allègre did, for example, who led a climatosceptic offensive, when he was a recognized geologist, but not a climate specialist.

We then see that there is a system that gets carried away. The media, as a matter of principle, and even before social networks or news channels, like to give voice to marginal and dissenting opinions, even if it means overvaluing them, and putting them on the same level as solidly established scientific consensuses. That causes a problem.

Admittedly, the history of science, from Pasteur to Flemming, teaches us that it also progresses through the brilliant intuition of people who oppose the doxa. But the essence of science is to be discussed, validated by its peers, and to go through experiments that can be reproduced. Being right against everyone is not an option, and that’s what we see in the film. Lyssenko is of course a special case, the Soviet ideology and political system took matters into their own hands to lead to an official science breaking with the laws of Darwin and Mendel on genetics. But the ciclosporin affair, with Professor Even, also shows us the political frenzy: a minister, or a ministerial cabinet, encouraged the premature disclosure of a remedy supposed to cure AIDS, which was then the disease of the moment . And then the media got carried away, because they obviously love announcements and sensational discoveries.

How then to treat scientific news with caution and without relativism, especially in a context of crisis and fears, when we see the limits of recognition by peers as a guarantee of seriousness?

We must move forward with great caution, and rely on a scientific community that can look at the results of studies with calm and serenity, the time of research not being that of the media. We must also encourage scientific bodies to take a stand. This also applies to political authorities who sometimes act under the pressure of public opinion. During the Covid crisis, they were slow to speak clearly and clearly, for fear of suffering the wrath of Raoult’s worshipers. But these malfunctions do not have a single cause.

With the controversy over the memory of water, for example, we see that even after a public rectification, ideas can persist. How to manage to thwart them and restore the truth after such excitement? Especially in the age of social media…

It is true that France is still tormented by a number of collective beliefs without scientific validity. Just this summer, in a TikTok video, Christine from Christine and The Queens said that water has a memory. It’s amazing: it is true that this term, the memory of water, is beautiful and very poetic. It was not invented by Jacques Benveniste, but it remained in people’s minds, even though it was scientifically established, after the controversy, that this was absolutely not possible.

But what matters in the first place is that while everyone is free to have beliefs, public policies must be based on scientific certainties and truths. That is what counts first, and that is what is expected of public health policies.

Are we doomed to repeat the same mistakes?

I really hope that we have learned our lessons, and that we are more careful with assertive statements and arguments from authority, in order to guard against the appearance of a new guru.

This film is a useful reminder, because if the stories it returns to had less impact than the Covid, they were more fleeting and less remembered, the stories that are made with the speakers and the archives are evocative examples of the mechanisms at work between the media, politicians and a deviant scientist or doctor. They are interesting to follow and resonate with our news.