House passes stopgap bill that pauses changes to federal science grant-making process

The proposed changes, which would have given control of science funding to appointed bureaucrats, were criticized widely by the scientific community

A Trump administration effort to give political figures control over a large swath of U.S. science funding is off the table until at least December.

On Tuesday members of the House of Representatives voted 370-48, with 14 members not voting, to adopt a Senate appropriations bill that will continue funding federal agencies until December 11.

In August, as part of the stopgap measure, the Senate agreed not to adopt proposed rule changes from the Office of Budget Management that would give politically appointed bureaucrats authority over federal research grants. If implemented, these changes would break from the current system, in which independent panels of peer reviewers, experts in the field, assess grant requests for funding from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and other governmental agencies.

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The proposed rule changes have met an outpouring of opposition from the scientific community. Thousands of researchers, including several Nobel laureates, used the public comment period on the proposal to say it would politicize research and destroy U.S. leadership in global science.

The question of whether the proposed rule changes will go further could hinge largely on the outcome of the midterm elections, which will be held in November: Democrats, who are currently favored to win control of the House, have broadly opposed the changes.

Adam Kovac is a breaking news reporter at Scientific American.

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