Credit: AP Photo

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 […]