Ranjit Chandra

Dr. Ranjit Kumar Chandra, OC, MD, is a world-renowned expert in the field of nutrition and immunology who has been accused of committing scientific fraud by the British Medical Journal. His alleged fraud was also the subject of a 2006 documentary by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Controversy

In the summer of 2002, Dr. Chandra retired from Memorial University of Newfoundland under a cloud of suspicion. He had published a study in the September 2001 edition of Nutrition claiming his patented multivitamin formula could reverse memory problems in people over the age of 65. However, the same study had been previously submitted to the British Medical Journal in 2000 and rejected after a review by a statistical expert, who stated that the study had "all the hallmarks of having been completely invented". The BMJ asked Memorial University to investigate. When they, too, found that the study could not possibly have been completed as claimed, they asked Chandra to produce his data. He refused, claiming the university had lost it, and resigned, avoiding disciplinary action and later even going so far as threatening a lawsuit against his accusers.

The claims made in his study were so amazing that they garnered a lot of mainstream attention. This actually turned out to be bad for Chandra because when the "New York Times" published a story about it, several other world-renowned scientists began looking at his published results and realised it was completely fabricated. By 2005, his vitamin study had been completely debunked and retracted, which led to further investigations into his previous research and published studies.

In the late 1980s, Dr. Chandra was hired to do a study for US manufacturer of Isomil and Similac, Ross Pharmaceuticals. Ross wanted to know if their formula could help babies avoid allergies. It was Chandra's nurse, Marilyn Harvey's job to find 288 newborns in the St. John's, Newfoundland area whose parents had allergies and who were willing to participate in the research. Nestle ("Good Start") and Mead Johnson had also contacted him to do similar studies on their baby formulas. After just about one year, Marilyn Harvey had not even come close to finding 288 newborns for the Ross study, but mysteriously, Dr. Chandra published the Nestle study, and later the other studies as well.

The results of the three studies results were even more remarkable. In spite of nearly identical ingredients, Chandra found that the Nestle and Mead Johnson formulas could, in fact, protect infants from allergies, but the Ross Pharmaceuticals formula did not. When asked to explain this discrepancy, Chandra claimed the Ross study had not been designed right and he had not been paid enough to do it properly, even though he had participated in the design of all the studies.

Since these facts have come to light, he has been accused of never actually performing the studies he published in respectable journals such as the British Medical Journal, and in his own journal, Nutrition Research.

In order to try to prop up his case, Chandra published a study by someone named Amrit Jain in "Nutrition Research" confirming his previous results. Amrit Jain was supposedly affiliated with the Medical Clinic and Nursing Home, Jaipur, India; however, this place appears to be completely fictional. It has never been referred to anywhere except in Amrit Jain's paper. Also, Amrit Jain's mailing address is not in India, but a Canadian post office box. When investigators attempted to contact Jain, they were unable to get a reply or even confirm his existence or credentials.

In every case where Dr. Chandra's research was called into question, Memorial University took action. University officials claimed that the university was unable to make a case for research fraud because the raw data on which a proper evaluation could be made had gone missing. Because the accusation was that the data did not exist, this was a puzzling rationale.

As a consequence he has not received any disciplinary action from Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland.

Money

It was revealed during Dr. Chandra's divorce trial that he has 120 bank accounts spread across about a dozen countries (mostly tax havens), worth over $2 million. He claimed that the funds were held in trust for research, however, many of the accounts were opened as joint accounts and some of them in the names of other members of his family. The judge in the trial concluded that it was not possible that the money came from his salary as a doctor or as a professor. It is believed the money came from the funds provided to finance the studies he allegedly failed to complete.

External links

* [http://www.mun.ca/marcomm/home/chandra.php] Memorial University web site detailing the Chandra affair
* [http://www.cbc.ca/national/news/chandra/ "The Secret Life of Dr. Chandra"] , "CBC News" ( [http://www.cbc.ca/national/news/chandra/part2.html part 2] ) ( [http://www.cbc.ca/national/news/chandra/part3.html part 3] )
* [http://www.sethroberts.net/#chandra The Strange Case of Dr. Chandra]
* [http://gg.ca/honours/search-recherche/honours-desc.asp?lang=e&TypeID=orc&id=2583 Order of Canada citation]
* [http://healthyskepticism.org/library/ref.php?id=25 Leading vitamin scientist faces fire over data (December 2003)]
* [http://www.cbc.ca/story/science/national/2004/06/10/chandra040610.html Journals call for review of scientist's multivitamin research] , "CBC News", June 2004
* [http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/22614/ Nutrition retracts 2001 paper] , "The Scientist", March 2005
* [http://www.fancey.ca/gark/?showfulltext=138 Journal retracts Nfld. scientist's controversial vitamin article (March 2005)]