For “a nobody and a nothing”, neuroanatomy professor Jonathan Leo sure seems to have riled the editorial staff at JAMA.

The tempest began when Leo, a professor at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee, wrote a letter to the British Medical Journal (BMJ) about a paper published by JAMA last May. The JAMA paper’s authors supported the use of an antidepressant to prevent depression in patients recovering from stroke. The antidepressant, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor called escitalopram (Lexapro), is produced by Forest Pharmaceuticals. But in his letter, Leo noted that lead author Robert Robinson of the University of Iowa had been a speaker for Forest Pharmaceuticals four years earlier – a conflict of interest that had not been disclosed in the original paper. Leo used this as an example of how “the scientific machinery is broken” by hidden conflicts of interest and the medical culture that has nurtured them.

Shortly thereafter, JAMA published a letter from Robinson acknowledging the conflict of interest and blaming the omission on the usual culprit: “errors of memory”. (Kudos to the Knight Science Journalism Tracker for heaving a weary sigh at that one.) Meanwhile, according to the WSJ Health Blog, JAMA’s editors also took the time to make a few phone calls to Leo and his supervisors to question his decision to publish the letter in BMJ rather than allowing editors to first handle the matter confidentially at JAMA. Leo says the phone call to him was threatening (“You are banned from JAMA from life. You will be sorry,” he quoted JAMA executive deputy editor Phil Fontanarosa as saying); JAMA denies Leo’s account of the call.

But JAMA’s editor-in-chief, Catherine DeAngelis let her anger show in an interview with the WSJ. “This guy is a nobody and a nothing,” she said. As for the content of her phone calls to Leo’s superiors: “it is none of your business.”