In reply: As always, I appreciate Arnold's input, and he is right yet again: M Reid was Director-General, New South Wales Health, 1995–2001, and J Paterson was Secretary, Health and Community Services, Victoria, 1992–1996. This information was conveyed in the author's details for Paterson, but inexplicably not for Reid.

The Journal asks its contributors to declare "competing interests"; that is, disclosure of "any situation in which an individual . . . might be influenced . . . by financial or personal factors that involve self-interest".1 Most journals, including the MJA, choose to focus on competing financial interests, but an ongoing quandary is where to draw the line in the sand of competing interests — should they be religiosity, sexuality, consultancy within the political or health bureaucracy, or positions on committees or advisory boards, and so on?

Arnold wishes to move to a higher plane through disclosure of relevant areas of contributors' life stories, presumably to alert readers to the potential for bias. But might not the publication of a contributor's relevant career prejudice the response of the reader?

Kenneth Rothman, editor of the journal Epidemiology, has argued that objectivity in communication "depends on each contribution receiving its due regard, whatever the motivations for bringing it. It depends on judging a work on its merits, rather than on the inferred state of mind of the author".1 The contributions by Reid and Paterson were published under the Journal's For Debate banner. I was hoping for a debate on the messages rather than the messengers.