Accurate high energy x-ray diffraction data are presented on liquid water measured at room temperature. Sources of both systematic and statistical errors within the experiment are considered and data consistency checks are discussed. It is found that the resulting x-ray pair distribution function is smoothly varying in real space and shows no evidence of small peaks in the 3-5 Å region. Our results are in contrast to the recent findings reported in Petkov et al 2012 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 24 155102.