Yes. In practice, when we're talking about science in English, we're talking about the natural sciences.
You just gave the example of grant applications. That's, again, a different question. When you apply to SSHRC, NSERC or CIHR, there are, in fact, statistical data by SSHRC that follow up the rate of success for francophones and anglophones to be sure there is no bias.
They follow that up because that's a real question for a very simple reason. If you apply in French at SSHRC and they want Canadians to evaluate this, in practice, although most francophone university professors are bilingual, you cannot say the same of anglophone university professors, who are not bilingual. In being bilingual, you should again distinguish between reading French and English, speaking French, and writing French or English. I do all three of them, but some can read but don't talk. We have to be precise.
For your question, SSHRC will give you the exact number of the rate of success. The reason it's different, and this is my point of view.... The tendency of the three organizations to think that SSHRC should be with NSERC and the three councils should be all together is very nice, but there is a perverse effect to applying the same criteria to social sciences and humanities because social sciences are what I call in sociology “indexical”. They are local.
When I work on Brother Marie-Victorin about Quebec science, it would be absurd to publish that in English in Australia. First, they wouldn't be interested. Second, the Quebec people won't read about Marie-Victorin. If I talk about galaxies, there are no Quebec galaxies and there are no Canadian galaxies. Galaxies are universal.
The history of the language used in social sciences and humanities is different from the history of the use of language and English. The problem we now have—and I could give examples in French—is that they think that being international in social sciences means writing in English.
I wrote a paper explaining that the statistical analysis is false. For 10 years, they translated the Revue française de sociologie to English. It had no more citations for a simple reason. If you are an American working on France, you already read French. If you don't read French, it's because you're not working on France.
Even if I translate the paper for you, you would not read it. It's not because it's not good; it's because it's not your field. There's a total confusion about all those things.