Macleod and Davey Smith state that the aim of their paper is to critically examine the role of psychosocial factors in health. Unfortunately , what could have been an interesting discussion is compromised by the authors implicit assumption that there is a single pathway linking social position to health. The authors seem to equate parsimonious causal analysis with a narrow , reductionistic perspective, subsequently devoting most of their paper to a discussion of " psychosocial versus material explanation " , while ignoring evidence showing multiple pathways linking social position to health. This commentary widens the debate by considering three issues...