A senior editor at The Lancet has claimed she was sacked after criticising last minute changes to an editorial she penned for the influential medical journal.

Rhona MacDonald told The Scientist that the journal’s editor, Richard Horton, “changed the whole meaning” of an editorial she wrote about the UK’s Department for International Development without consulting her. She says he made the article far more critical of the department, which oversees overseas aid.

“I was completely scandalized,” says MacDonald.

She told The Scientist she was sacked after emailing both her original version and the in-press version of the editorial to a number of people before it was published. Elsevier, the publisher of The Lancet, apparently says it “doesn’t not agree” “does not agree” with MacDonald’s statements but won’t comment further [corrected 28/5].