There is an unfortunate adversarial relationship between some members
of the House Science Comittee and the National Science Foundation,
described in an article at
http://news.sciencemag.org/policy/2014/10/battle-between-nsf-and-house-science-committee-escalates-how-did-it-get-bad.
An outcome could be a negative effect on funding of some ecological research.
Several ecological projects are among the 50 NSF awards for which the
House Science Committee has requested (and received) NSF records
including the proposals, reviewer comments on their merit,
correspondence between program officers and principal investigators,
and any other information that had helped NSF decide to fund the project.
Communicating Climate Change (C3)
Ecosystem Resilience to Human Impacts: Ecological Consequences of
Early Human-Set Fires in New Zealand
CNH: Does Community-Based Rangeland Ecosystem Management Increase the
Resilience of Coupled Systems to Climate Change in Mongolia?
CRPA: How do We Learn the Fate of Tropical Forests under Climate
Change? -- A Multimedia Exhibition of Photographic Art Portraying
Scientists and Students at Work in Amazonia
CNH-Ex: An Analysis of Disturbance Interactions and Ecosystem
Resilience in the Northern Forest of New England
I've had some experience with similar political involvement with NSF
funding, as my previous grant was #35 on a list issued by two U.S.
Senators of the top 100 most wasteful uses of funding from the 2009
"Stimulus Bill".
David Inouye
President, Ecological Society of America
