The war over science is heating up on Capitol Hill.

GOP House members have had little success reining in research agencies so far, but, emboldened by their growing majorities, they’re hoping for better luck next year. They plan to push proposals to cut funding for global warming and social science research, put strict new rules on the National Science Foundation’s grant-making process and overhaul how science informs policy making at the EPA.


At the same time, however, researchers and their advocates in the Democratic caucus are taking increasingly aggressive stances of their own: Rather than answer GOP objections one by one, or brush them off, they’re making a larger issue of what they see as heavy-handed interference based on ideology rather than methodology.

Indeed, some Republicans have already accused NSF of wasting millions on useless projects — even one that could be used to censor free speech, they say. House aides have been sent to NSF’s headquarters to comb documents for signs of bad decision making. And the Ebola epidemic unleashed a wave of criticism — including a demand from Sen. Rand Paul for an explanation why the National Institutes of Health was spending money developing an “origami condom” instead of an Ebola vaccine.

Opponents in the scientific world and their political allies believe that, at its heart, the GOP assault isn’t about bringing greater accountability to the EPA or NSF, but rather a larger lack of trust in science that could soon spur efforts to micromanage NIH, the Department of Defense and other agencies that, all told, spend tens of billions on scientific research every year.

“I think we can destroy our own research — and we can get criticized by others around the world on the direction we’re taking — in the next two years,” Texas Democratic Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, the ranking member on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, said. Johnson has grown increasingly vocal in denouncing the direction the committee has taken: In the past, committee members say it was an unusually bipartisan body even when relations among the rest of Congress were strained.

The chamber passed a series of bills this month to tighten its reins on the EPA. One bans the agency from drawing on so-called secret science by requiring the agency to disclose any data it uses in the name of transparency. The EPA has issued air quality rules that drew on major epidemiological studies by the American Cancer Society and Harvard University, for example, but because researchers protected the identities of the individuals who served as subjects, the full data isn’t publicly available.

The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, chaired by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), has become the nucleus of the battle with NSF and EPA. Smith considers himself an advocate for science, but for more than a year he has maintained lists of individual scientific grants for research he thinks aren’t in taxpayers’ best interest, in hopes of prodding NSF into making different decisions.

But researchers warn that funding only science that appears politically safe will stifle innovation and say that the agency actually does an impressive job of choosing which projects to fund. “Recent research on massaging baby rats with a tiny brush, for example, probably looked frivolous to outsiders but actually led to successful new medical treatments for premature human babies, a project that won the “Golden Goose Award,” issued by the Association of American Universities and other groups, for research that looks obscure but has led to major breakthroughs.

They hoped the NSF’s new director, France Córdova, could breathe fresh air into the relationship when she came on board in spring of 2014. Córdova has been pounding the pavement on Capitol Hill and meeting frequently with legislators, an unusual move for a director of the agency.

But relations between Córdova and Smith were tested almost immediately. Smith had been requesting information on specific NSF grants for months that the agency has refused to hand over in full, and he wrote the director to follow up as soon as she took over NSF.

Córdova is walking a thin line to try to please Congress and protect researchers and grant reviewers. She and Smith have come to an unusual arrangement: Science committee staff can view the documents by appointment at NSF’s headquarters in Virginia. Some information, such as names of people who review grant applications, is redacted and they can’t take any paperwork with them. Smith maintains that this agreement shouldn’t be permanent and said he hopes the NSF will make it easier to his staff to access the information in the future.

An NSF-funded Indiana University grant called Truthy — with a wink to Stephen Colbert — caught Smith’s attention most recently. The $1 million grant was for research on how information spreads on Twitter. But parts of the grant proposal sounded alarm bells and conservative media zeroed in on the prospect that Truthy could be used to curb free speech and censor the Internet.

After the Washington Free Beacon and Fox News ran articles questioning NSF’s judgment in issuing the Truthy grant, Smith said in a statement that “the NSF is out of touch and out of control” and that the grant looks even more inappropriate than others he’s studied. In a letter to Córdova he asked for all available information on the grant, as soon as possible.

Johnson, for her part, has had questions of her own on how the conservative media has gotten hold of information on specific grants. A Fox News article published this fall on one NSF grant included information that was not public — but it had been reviewed by the House Science Committee staff. In a letter to Smith, Johnson questioned how Fox News got information that had only been seen by the NSF and the committee. A leak like that would likely be “an effort to embarrass the agency and the grantee,” she wrote in the letter.

Córdova told POLITICO earlier this fall that the agency could do a better job of explaining its research, especially in the Internet age when information on NSF grants is available at the click of a button. Improving communication with the public is a key part of her mission as the head of the NSF.

“There’s responsibility on both sides,” Córdova said. Congressmen have privately told her that silly names and abstracts for grants were part of the problem because they elicit complaints from constituents, she said. And the NSF has a new policy to encourage higher-ups at the agency to think more about grants’ packaging. Having a “clearer narrative” about what the agency does will help both the public and members of Congress understand NSF’s mission better, she said.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) chairs the House Science Committee. | Getty

But some in the research community say damage is already being done. With Smith’s high-profile oversight, researchers will be less likely to apply for grants to fund unorthodox-sounding — but potentially groundbreaking — research projects in future years, leaders of the Association of American Universities said recently in a statement.

“Scientists and engineers, particularly young ones, should not be discouraged from pursuing unconventional, often groundbreaking scientific research,” AAU’s board of directors, who represent leading research universities, said earlier this month. The group also criticized Smith for what they said appears to be an arbitrary process for deciding which grants to call out.

The intense focus on the NSF’s peer review process may have a “chilling effect,” one D.C. lobbyist said. These concerns build on worries that recent sequester-related cuts hurt NSF and NIH’s research capacities.

Research groups and universities have traditionally had strong bipartisan support from Congress and are hesitant to take sides or get embroiled in political battles that could isolate supporters.

But they’re coming around to the idea of putting more heat on Congress and trying to involve the business community — which often benefits from the basic research conducted at NSF — in pushing back the tide as well, a House aide said.

That will include battling a bill called the Frontiers in Innovation, Research, Science and Technology Act, which passed the House Science Committee this year and which Smith said he plans to resurrect in the next Congress. That would place significant new regulations on how the NSF goes about choosing science projects to fund and distributing money. Research groups were strongly opposed to the bill and said it reflected a lack of trust in the NSF.

Rep. Larry Bucshon (R-Ind.), who chairs the science subcommittee that handles NSF, said he’s optimistic about FIRST Act’s prospects going forward and thinks the bill strikes a good balance between too much and too little oversight for the agency.

Bucshon also has a watchful eye on NIH, which in October came under criticism from Sen. Rand Paul when its director, Francis Collins, claimed that the agency would have been farther along on an Ebola vaccine if it weren’t for budget cuts in recent years.

“Have you seen what the NIH spends money on?” Paul asked. He singled out grants that tackled fruit fly mating and an “origami condom.” (The condom was made to better protect people from STDs and its creators say on their website they plan to make it available for public use next year.)

Bucshon said he combed through the agency’s programs to see how they were funding Ebola research — and came up mostly dry — begging some of the same questions about NIH that he’s had about NSF.

But GOP efforts to take greater control over the way agencies decide what research to fund aren’t always focused on oversight: In some cases lawmakers have sought to dictate themselves which projects get funded.

In one case last year, Congress passed a law called the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act that steered a small pool of money out of public funding for presidential campaigns and into pediatric research; Congress traditionally funds NIH through block grants so the agency has control over what diseases to focus research money on. The bill was a pet project for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

Congressional skepticism of social science dates back decades to Sen. William Proxmire (D-Wis.), who singled out research projects as examples of government waste via his “Golden Fleece” award. In recent years, it has become an interest of Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who spotlights government research that appears wasteful in his annual “Wastebook.”

Coburn successfully pushed an amendment restricting NSF funding of political science in 2013. Congress repealed it in January, again through the appropriations process. But the event was a lesson for many in the science community who were used to hearing congressional criticism of social science but never expected anything to make it through Congress.

Smith has taken a cue from Coburn’s playbook — sometimes literally. Many of the NSF grants about which he has requested information were singled out first by Coburn. Others appear to come from a list of questionable grants assembled by a Texas watchdog agency.

In the past, Democrats and Republicans on Smith’s committee have had strong bipartisan relationships, even in times when partisan tensions ran high. But changes in leadership and staff in recent years have changed their demeanor.

Still, some members such as Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D-Ill.) have tried hard to maintain ties across the aisle. Lipinski, one of the main negotiators on the FIRST Act, said he’s hoping that Republicans in the Senate such as Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) will be advocates for the scientific community going forward. Alexander is a longtime advocate for research funding and was a key figure in pushing the last bipartisan reauthorization of NSF through the Senate.

Johnson, too, said she has hopes that the committee will learn how to work together better. She and Smith are both from Texas and often talk on the plane rides to and from her home state, she said.

“I try to talk with him,” Johnson said. “He normally says it’s the leadership — I have no way to dispute that.”