Did Lord Rothschild get it wrong? Academic research financed by UK government departments is still based on the 'customer/contractor' relationship proposed by Rothschild almost 30 years ago. Last week, as Lord Phillips' public inquiry into the recent crisis over bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) exposed the blurring of scientific and political judgements inside the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF), some observers were asking if Rothschild made a mistake in inviting just such an overlap.

There is certainly much in the inquiry's report to support this view. At its heart is the finding that public statements by MAFF, and its decisions on research directions, were dominated by a political objective: the need to provide reassurances about the safety of British beef. Evidence given to the Phillips committee reveals the wide impact of this mind-set. For example, the political goal of reassurance seems to have been closely linked to support for the scientific hypothesis that BSE was a variant of scrapie, present in UK sheep for many centuries.

Such evidence might be taken as a warning against ever allowing political agendas to influence scientific priorities. But a different conclusion can also be drawn, that the problem was not the attempt to impose policy-related priorities on research in an area of vital social concern, but rather the misguided nature of those priorities.

In other circumstances, political priorities have shaped the research agenda in a more positive way. The UK government's decision to appoint an AIDS research supremo in the 1980s to review the scientific agenda, compare it with public-health needs, and commission research to fill perceived gaps, was one example. If the BSE research agenda had been controlled by the Department of Health rather than MAFF, with public rather than animal health dominating the agenda, the outcome might have been very different.

In other words, Rothschild got it right, at least up to a point. The failure was one of implementation, rooted in political dynamics. The influence of political muscle is highlighted by the ill-fated attempts by health-department officials in 1990 to persuade MAFF to appoint a single research supremo for BSE, similar to the AIDS post (see page 5). A striking feature of Phillips' description of this episode is the absence within government of any individual with sufficient clout to establish a coherent research policy on BSE, properly informed by the nation's leading scientific experts.

Why this situation arose is a question of pressing national interest, sufficiently pressing to justify a separate inquiry into the linked dynamics of science advice and priority setting. The Royal Society has taken a step in the right direction by promising a quick report on the governance of science. But the Phillips report provides a unique opportunity to go further. A new public inquiry could revisit sensitive topics, from the quality of research in government labs to the ways in which scientific advice is put into practice. It should also address whether BSE research should be handled by the Food Standards Agency, not MAFF. The challenge is daunting, but the need is urgent.