Texas Gov. Rick Perry stirred up a fresh scientific spat today with his claim that scientists were manipulating their data about climate change "so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects" — a view that serves to highlight the differences among the GOP presidential candidates on science-related issues.

During a town hall meeting in Bedford, N.H., here's what Perry, one of the front-runners for the Republican nomination, had to say about the state of climate science:

"I do believe that the issue of global warming has been politicized. I think there are a substantial number or scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. I think we're seeing, almost weekly or daily, scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that manmade global warming is what is causing the climate to change. Yes, our climate has changed. They've been changing ever since the earth was formed. But I do not buy into a group of scientists who have in some cases [been] found to be manipulating this information. ..."

The comments are pretty much in line with what Perry has said in the past. He's playing off the suspicions raised by the "Climategate" e-mail controversy that broke in 2009. That flap revealed that the most outspoken climate researchers are all too human when it comes to talking about their intellectual adversaries in private — but in the end, they were mostly cleared of scientific malfeasance (although one published graph was judged to be "misleading").

The criticisms of Perry's view follow well-worn tracks as well: On the left-leaning Think Progress blog, Texas A&M climate researcher Andrew Dessler is quoted as saying that none of the credible atmospheric scientists in Texas agree with the governor. "This is a particularly unfortunate situation, given the hellish drought that Texas is now experiencing, and which climate change is almost certainly making worse," he said.

Think Progress goes so far as to list more than three dozen scientists who disagree with Perry.

Brian Snyder / Reuters

Texas Gov. Rick Perry extends his arm toward a lab worker during a tour of Resonetics Laser Micromaching in Nashua, N.H., on Wednesday. Resonetics CEO Chris Banas is to the left of Perry, and Cliff Gabay, the company's president, looks on from the right.

The Texas governor's views come in contrast with those of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, an early front-runner in the GOP presidential field. Romney has said "I believe, based on what I read, that the world is getting warmer" and added that "I believe that humans contribute to that."

As a result, he said at a New Hampshire town hall meeting in June, "it's important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may be significant contributors." However, he said any measures to stem greenhouse gases should be applied on an international basis. He opposed putting a carbon cap-and-trade system into place because it would put America at a competitive disadvantage.

The Perry vs. Romney climate split may be the latest and buzziest difference to emerge in the race for the GOP nomination, but when you look closely at the candidates, you'll see other differences as well. Here's a rundown on four of the leading candidates, related to four hot-button scientific topics: climate policy, evolution education, stem-cell research and science funding:

Climate policy:

We've already summarized Perry's and Romney's views.

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota opposes climate change legislation, saying that carbon dioxide is a "harmless gas." During a town hall meeting in South Carolina this week, she said that all the issues surrounding climate change would have to be "settled on the basis of real science, not manufactured science."

U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas has called the concern about Earth's changing climate "the greatest hoax I think that has been around for many, many years, if not hundreds of years," based on the Climategate reports (see above). He's opposed to energy subsidies as well as government efforts to control greenhouse-gas emissions. "Pollution can be better taken care of under a private market system, under private property," he said.

(President Barack Obama, by the way, favors policies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, but the current "climate" in Congress has severely limited any progress on environmental initiatives.)

Evolution education:

Perry says he is a "firm believer in intelligent design as a matter of faith and intellect, and I believe it should be presented in schools alongside the theories of evolution." Intelligent design is the view that the complexity seen in nature is best explained as resulting from the efforts of an intelligent designer — for example, God, or an alien civilization. But in Perry's case, certainly God.

Romney said during his presidential campaign that he believes "God designed the universe" and that he believes God "used the process of evolution to create the human body." As Massachusetts governor, he opposed the teaching of intelligent design in public-school science classes. "The science class is where to teach evolution, or if there are any other scientific thoughts that need to be discussed," he told The New York Times. "If we're going to talk about more philosophical matters, like why it was created, and was there an intelligent designer behind it, that's for the religion class or philosophy class or social studies class."

Bachmann says "evolution has never been proven" and believes that intelligent design should be taught alongside the evolutionary view of biological change. "What I support is putting all science on the table and then letting students decide," Bachmann told reporters at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans in June.

Paul says "nobody has concrete proof" for evolutionary theory, although he acknowledges that "it's a pretty logical theory." In his view, the intelligent-design concept has more to do with personal beliefs rather than science. "In a libertarian society these beliefs aren't nearly as critical. When you have government schools, it becomes important," he said. "'Are you fair in teaching that the earth could have been created by a creator or it came out of a pop, out of nowhere?' In a personal world, we don't have government dictating and ruling all these things; it's not very important."

(Obama favors the current legal view that teaching the intelligent-design concept in public-school science classes would be unconstitutional.)

Stem-cell research:

Perry is opposed to human embryonic stem-cell research, which involves destroying human embryos to harvest the therapeutic cells. But he's a strong supporter of less controversial adult stem-cell research. In fact, he was a beneficiary of such research when he received an infusion of his own lab-grown stem cells to speed recovery from a back injury.

Romney has voiced support for embryonic stem-cell research in the past, but he says his position has changed over the years, and he now opposes such research.

Bachmann is opposed to federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, but favors less controversial initiatives that use adult stem cells or reprogrammed cells (also known as induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS cells).

Paul says the federal government should have no jurisdiction over the conduct of embryonic stem-cell research. He has, however, sponsored legislation that would use tax credits to encourage less controversial stem-cell studies, as well as the establishment of stem-cell and cord-blood banks.

(Obama has favored expanded federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research — an issue that has been tied up in lengthy legal proceedings. Most researchers hope that reprogrammed cells will eventually provide a way out of the moral and ethical controversy.)

Science funding:

Federal funding for the National Science Foundation has become something of a hot potato in some GOP quarters, in light of recent criticism of the agency from Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.

Neither Perry nor Romney has made his views on NSF funding widely known, but in the past the Texas governor as well as the Massachusetts governor have touted NSF grants that came to institutions in their states.

Bachmann has faced criticism from the right-leaning Club for Growth for her "questionable" vote to reauthorize spending by the NSF. However, Bachmann did recently seek to reduce NSF funding to 2008 levels for a budget reduction of $1.7 billion.

Paul voiced strong opposition to federal funding for science education in 2000, saying that "Congress has no constitutional authority to single out any one academic discipline as deserving special emphasis." More recently, Paul was one of two members of Congress voting against a resolution to mark NSF's 60th anniversary.

(After he took office, Obama vowed to double NSF's $6.5 billion budget, but this year's $6.8 billion figure falls well short of that goal.)

What to add?

I realize I'm missing many other worthy GOP candidates, and many other worthy issues relating to science and technology. Feel free to add your comments about the candidates and the issues, but please keep the conversation civil. This isn't the place to talk about the debt crisis, or chew over the immigration issue, or handicap the horse race. That's what the First Read blog is for. Check in with First Read and msnbc.com's Politics section for daily coverage of the 2012 presidential campaign.

Update for 10:30 p.m. ET Aug. 18: Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, another GOP presidential hopeful, stirred the pot by sending along this Twitter tweet: "To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy." This follows up on The Washington Post's quote from Huntsman's chief strategist, John Weaver: "We're not going to win a national election if we become the anti-science party."

Although Huntsman accepts the view that greenhouse-gas emissions are contributing to climate change, he told Time's Swampland blog in May that cap-and-trade systems haven't worked and that "putting additional burdens on the pillars of growth right now is counterproductive."

On the stem-cell issue, a spokesman for Huntsman told LifeNews.com that the Republican supports research that involves "adult stem cells, non-embryonic stem cells and certain types of embryonic stem cell[s]" but does not support federal funding for research on new lines of embryonic stem cells. Such a stand appears to be consistent with the policy that was in place during George W. Bush's tenure at the White House.

Huntsman has generally been supportive of science funding: Among the efforts he supported as governor was the Utah Science Technology and Research Initiative at the University of Utah.

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also add me to your Google+ circle, and check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds. 

AP/Sam Ogden via The Whitehead Institute

This photo shows a mouse composed, in part, of cells that were reprogrammed to a stem cell-like state. New research has used these type of cells to create offspring from two fathers.

Reproductive scientists have used stem cell technology to create mice from two dads. The breakthrough could be a boon to efforts to save endangered species -- and the procedure could make it possible for same-sex couples to have their own genetic children.

The scientists, led by Richard Berhringer at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Texas, describe the process in a study posted Wednesday in the journal Biology of Reproduction. Here's how it works:

Cells from a male mouse fetus were manipulated to produce an induced pluripotent stem cell line. These iPS cells are ordinary cells that have been reprogrammed to take on a state similar to that of an embryonic stem cell, which can develop into virtually any kind of tissue in the body.

About 1 percent of the iPS cell colonies spontaneously lost their Y chromosome, turning them into "XO" cells. These cells were injected into embryos from donor female mice, and transplanted into surrogate mothers.

The mommy mice gave birth to babies carrying one X chromosome from the original male mouse. Once these mice matured, the females were mated with normal male mice. Some of their offspring had genetic contributions from both fathers.

The study authors say their technique could be applied to animal breeding efforts, so that two males with desirable traits could be crossed without mixing in traits from females. "It is also possible that one male could produce both oocytes (eggs) and sperm for self-fertilization to generate male and female progeny," the team writes. This could help save an endangered species that no longer had females to mate with, for example.

In the future, scientists may be able to create human eggs from male iPS cells in vitro, allowing them to eliminate the need for the intermediate offspring, though a surrogate mother would still be needed to carry the two-father pregnancy to term.

With a variation of the technique, "it may also be possible to generate sperm from a female donor and produce viable male and female progeny with two mothers," the researchers write.

The research joins a long list of stem cell breakthroughs with mouse models. Check out the stories below to learn what else researchers have done with mice.

• Whole mice created from skin cells
• Stem cells reverse defects in mice embryos
• Sex differences found in stem cells
• Mice born without a dad's DNA
• Paralyzed mice given stem cells walk again

John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).

Jeff Miller / UW-Madison file

An instructur holds up a culture dish containing human embryonic stem cells during a lab course at the University of Wisconsin.

Political shifts will produce a fresh set of skirmishes over science issues ranging from stem cells to spaceflight. And when it comes to climate change, the skirmishes could well escalate into a war over science.

"I'm not looking forward to seeing that," said Chris Mooney, who wrote "The Republican War on Science" in 2005. But based on some of the comments made during the campaign, House Republicans might well go on the offensive on climate policy.

Here's a quick rundown on the top issues:

Climate change and energy policy
In the wake of his Election Day "shellacking," even President Barack Obama acknowledged that his controversial plan to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions through a carbon trading system would have to be put on hold. "Cap-and-trade was just one way of skinning the cat," Obama told reporters. "It's not the only way. I'm going to be looking for other means to address this problem." 

Another way to skin the climate-change cat would be for the Environmental Protection Agency to take a more active role in regulating carbon emissions -- and back in June, the Senate turned back an effort to clamp down on the EPA's efforts in that area. A new, more conservative Congress could revive the anti-regulation campaign and raise fresh questions about the science behind climate claims. That's exactly what Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said he would do during the campaign. (It's not yet clear, however, whether the new House leadership will let him do it.) 

Mooney thinks this is how a new war in science will start: "The way in which it will be most manifest is through House members grandstanding and holding hearings and investigations over climate scientists and their e-mails. But in fact, this has already been looked at, and the scientists have been exonerated. There's no 'there' there."

Roger Pielke Jr., a science policy analyst who criticizes the international response to climate change in a new book titled "The Climate Fix," said it's "perfectly fine to ask questions about the integrity of the science."

"But if that is a tactic in a larger battle over energy policy, it politicizes science, and it also detracts attention from developing energy policy," he told me. "After all this talk about 'the Republican war on science,' I would fully expect that turnabout is fair play, and we're going to see the House playing the same sorts of political strategies with the Obama administration. Whatever side is doing it, the leadership has to try to rise above that and not get sucked into some kind of left-vs.-right battle."

Mooney said lawmakers should forgo the finger-pointing over Climategate and instead work out new policies for breaking America's addiction to fossil fuels. "While they dawdle and refuse to do anything on climate, they're also dawdling and refusing to do anything about clean energy, and when they do that, they're setting the U.S. up for a big fall," Mooney said.

Pielke agreed: "With China spending hundreds of billions of dollars on energy innovation, and with Germany, India and others making investments as well, it'd be a real shame to see Congress lose itself in a petty battle over politicized science," he told me.

In an ideal world, the power shift could provide an opening for fresh policy approaches. "Perhaps this is an opportunity to think about how to design an energy and climate policy that can survive over many, many Congresses," Pielke said. "We ought to be talking about science policy, not science politics." 

Stem cells
When Obama took office, he hoped to ease federal limits on funding for embryonic stem cell research, but that policy change has been tied up for months due to a restraining order issued by a federal judge. Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics, expects the stem-cell standoff to continue, in part because of Congress' new composition.

Caplan said "the key challenge was whether Congress would finally not enact the Dickey-Wicker Amendment," which provides the legislative basis for the funding limits. House GOP leaders have been strongly supportive of the amendment, first passed in 1995.

"The Dickey Amendment keeps coming back, so I think this is very bad news for embryonic stem cell researchers," Caplan told me. "If the Dickey Amendment comes back, [opponents of the research] can tie it up some more. To me, this is really a sign that stem cell funding from the federal government for the next two years is not reliable. Given state deficits, people are going to move on to other areas of stem cell research not involving embryonic cells or cloning."

The issue received extra attention in Wisconsin, where human embryonic stem cells were first isolated and cultured in 1998. Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker said he supported a ban on human embryonic stem cell research, and his Democratic opponent, Tom Barrett, ran a TV ad claiming that Walker's stand would stymie cures for juvenile diabetes and other illnesses. Walker won, and with the GOP in charge of the governor's mansion as well as the legislature, a ban on stem cell research or cloning could conceivably come up for legislative action, as it did in 2005.

The big difference this time around is that stem cells are seen as an important part of the biotech industry, with states vying for private investment. Proponents of stem cell research say cracking down in one state would merely send companies to another state -- for instance, California, which elected Democrat Jerry Brown as governor. "I like stem cells," Brown said during the campaign.

Caplan said the Republican tsunami could bode well for another biotech frontier: synthetic biology, which involves re-engineering existing genomes to create new strains of organisms. The controversial technology is currently being studied by a presidential commission. "A technology that can create not only medicine and fuel, but also jobs, is likely to get a better reception in the newly constituted Congress," he said.

Human spaceflight
Congress already rewrote Obama's space policy before the election. The NASA authorization bill -- signed into law by the president just as lawmakers went into their pre-election recess -- calls for an extra shuttle flight to be flown next summer, makes a modest commitment to develop commercial space transports for the International Space Station and fast-tracks development efforts for a new heavy-lift rocket.

The only problem is that NASA still lacks the official congressional go-ahead to spend funds for the shuttle flight and other programs covered by NASA's $19 billion budget. That go-ahead has to come in a separate appropriations bill that Congress is expected to take up before the end of the year during a lame-duck session.

Space policy analyst John Logsdon said there would likely be pressure over the next few weeks to trim back NASA's budget, but he suspected that the extra shuttle flight would still get funded. "The argument for doing it, given the intention to keep the International Space Station going, is stronger than the fiscal constraints," he told me.

But something else might have to give. One of the possible targets is the $1.3 billion authorized over the next three years for a commercial crew initiative. But two of the Republicans likely to be part of the new House leadership -- Virginia's Eric Cantor and California's Kevin McCarthy -- come from districts that play a big role in the commercial space industry. Another potential target is the "21st Century Space Launch Complex" program, aimed at modernizing NASA's Kennedy Space Center at a cost of about $400 million a year.

One cause for celebration among commercial space advocates was the defeat of Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., who raised objections to legislation setting safety standards for private-sector spaceships. Oberstar said the provisions were too lax and would encourage a "tombstone mentality" for commercial spaceflight. With Oberstar no longer in the House, prospects have brightened for extending the current regulatory regime.

Research funding
Basic research has occasionally been used as a punching bag by Republicans seeking to call attention to scientific excesses. For example, the controversial GOP candidate for Delaware's Senate seat, Christine O'Donnell, got into trouble over a 2007 quote decrying the development of "mice with fully functioning human brains." (She appeared to be referring to experiments involving human brain cells that were grown in mice for stem cell research.) During the 2008 campaign, vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin went after fruit-fly research.

With the GOP in charge of the House, will funny-sounding research projects become an endangered species? David Goldston, who was chief of staff for the House Science Committee from 2001 to 2006 when it was under Republican control, doesn't think so. But he does expect science spending to come under closer scrutiny, just as other spending programs will.

"Most Republicans have beeen supportive of basic research, but I think there's going to be an internal battle over how the budget is shaped," he told me. "You could see some of these new Tea Party advocates coming in with a new attitude. ... A lot of these science issues are going to split the Republican Party, and it's going to take some time to see how those splits play out."

Even in a budget-cutting era, Pielke believes that basic research will survive largely intact. He recalled that the late Sen. William Proxmire, D-Wis., often ridiculed federally funded research by giving out Golden Fleece Awards.

"While there is bipartisan willingness to make fun of silly government expenditures, history also shows that there's tremendous bipartisan support for research and development," he said. "In the U.K. they just went through this enormous round of budget cuts, and one of the only areas that was protected was R&D."

What do you think? Will science survive the next two years relatively unscathed, or are we in for an escalating war on science? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

Update for 2 p.m. ET Nov. 4: Space News notes that two of the House Republicans likely to take key roles in NASA's future budgets have been strong critics of Obama's space policy. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., who is likely to head the House Appropriations Committee, has said Obama's plan would cede space supremacy to other countries such as China -- and he's also had some reservations about the move toward spaceflight commercialization (although one of the companies involved in that move, Orbital Sciences, is headquartered in his district). Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas, who is in line to head the House Science and Technology Committee, has said that NASA was "floundering" due to the White House's change in direction. Both lawmakers, however, voted for the NASA authorization bill that was pushed through Congress last month.

It's also important to note that federal research funding is coming off a $31 billion boost that was provided by Obama's economic stimulus package, and with House Republicans in a budget-cutting mood, that kind of largesse won't be seen again. Last month, Nature reported that researchers are concerned about a "cliff effect," in which projects funded by stimulus money fall off a cliff when the money runs out. Among the potential targets are the long-suffering America COMPETES Act and research projects that may now seem politically incorrect, such as the FutureGen carbon capture and storage initiative. 

Goldston now serves as director of government affairs for the Natural Resources Defense Council, but for this report, he was speaking only as a former Republican aide and not as an NRDC representative.

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," Alan's book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.