EPSRC accused of blacklisting repeatly unsuccessful applicants

Science: Do scientists have a fundamental right to apply for government money, even if their grant proposals are regularly rejected? That's one of the issues at the heart of a fiery debate now taking place in the United Kingdom, where a major funding agency has just announced it will ignore submissions from "repeatedly unsuccessful applicants," a policy that could exclude 5% of its previous grant applicants. The U.K.'s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) says the move is designed to ease the burden on volunteer peer-reviewers, but outraged researchers have called the change "black-listing" and "scientific McCarthyism."