The editors of the Journal of the American Medical Association are backing off a controversial policy to gag anyone complaining about study authors who fail to disclose conflicts of interest, the WSJ reports. The new policy comes in an editorial in this week’s issue of JAMA. Many portions of the editorial are identical to an online editorial posted in March. In addition to modifying the policy on speaking publicly about conflict of interest-related complaints, the new version of the editorial omits some material in the previous version. Gone are several paragraphs from the March editorial that attacked Jonathan Leo, a Tennessee researcher who says he was threatened by JAMA editors after publicly disclosing a conflict-of-interest problem he found with a JAMA study published last year. JAMA Editor in Chief Catherine DeAngelis called Leo a “nobody and

a nothing” when asked about him by the Health Blog earlier this year. See the post here . In the March editorial, the JAMA editors accused Leo of “a serious ethical breach of confidentiality” by writing publicly about the conflict of interest that was unreported in the study while JAMA editors were conducting an investigation. Leo says he decided to go public with the conflict-of-interest problem in the study after waiting months for JAMA editors to correct it themselves. As for the new version of the editorial, Leo says he is “glad…that “they no longer maintain their allegations that I violated a confidentiality agreement and was guilty of an ethical breach.” JAMA editors declined to comment. Photo: Associated Press

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JAMA Eases Stand on Public Complaints About Conflicts