Individuals are almost incapable of determining whether their own conflicts of interest or competing interests might affect their judgment. To mitigate bias in published work (or the perception of bias in that work), journals are increasingly tightening their requirements for authors and reviewers to declare and publish competing interests. The study by Liu and colleagues (doi:10.1136/bmj.j4619)1 opens up a new front in the debate—reporting payments by drug and device companies to US doctors who are also editors of academic journals.