A rare spat has broken out in the usually decorous world of medical journals. In a highly critical editorial, the BMJ, the former British Medical Journal, accuses Reed Elsevier, the publishing group, of “warmongering” through its international arms-fairs division, and calls on authors to boycott the Lancet, its flagship academic publication, until the links are severed.

The strongly worded article is not a direct attack on the Lancet, which under its outspoken editor Richard Horton launched the polemic by drawing attention to Reed Elsevier’s arms promotion activities in an article in September 2005.