Just so nobody thinks the previous post was just flippancy:

U.S. Lawmaker Proposes New Criteria for Choosing NSF Grants

by Jeffrey Mervis on 28 April 2013, 3:48 PM

New criteria. Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) is drafting legislation that would require the NSF director to certify that research met a number of new criteria.

Credit: U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology

The new chair of the House of Representatives science committee has drafted a bill that, in effect, would replace peer review at the National Science Foundation (NSF) with a set of funding criteria chosen by Congress. For good measure, it would also set in motion a process to determine whether the same criteria should be adopted by every other federal science agency.

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ScienceInsider has obtained a copy of the legislation, labeled "Discussion Draft" and dated 18 April, which has begun to circulate among members of Congress and science lobbyists. In effect, the proposed bill would force NSF to adopt three criteria in judging every grant. Specifically, the draft would require the NSF director to post on NSF's Web site, prior to any award, a declaration that certifies the research is:

1) "… in the interests of the United States to advance the national health, prosperity, or welfare, and to secure the national defense by promoting the progress of science;

2) "… the finest quality, is groundbreaking, and answers questions or solves problems that are of utmost importance to society at large; and

3) "… not duplicative of other research projects being funded by the Foundation or other Federal science agencies."

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[end quote: read the rest at the link]

Item 3 above is by itself sufficient to show that "Lamar" has no understanding of how science works. The nearest thing to a "gold standard" by which concensus can be reached is when multiple researchers repeat an original experiment and get the same result. Duplication of experiments, and funding to make duplicate research (called validation) possible, is an absolutely mandatory part of valid experimental scientific research.

Based on past reputation of the author (and several other Texican Republinuts) the only thing missing from the proposal is the requirement that all reports on funded research must conclude with "Because God Said So," but of course that can be tacked on by amendment during House debate.

John