A nutrition researcher with multiple retractions who unsuccessfully sued the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) for libel has been charged with defrauding a state health insurance plan.
The Toronto Star reports that a warrant has been issued for the arrest of Ranjit Kumar Chandra for billing the Ontario Health Insurance Plan for “services that were either not provided or billed inappropriately.” The charges do not appear to be related to his research: Chandra worked once a week as an allergist for the past four years, the Star reports, and the alleged fraud was at least $5,000.
Although Chandra was recently practicing medicine in Canada, it is believed he is currently in India, the Star notes.
Chandra, a former researcher at Memorial University in Newfoundland, has had several papers retracted, including from the BMJ and The Lancet. He sued the CBC in 2011 following a 2006 documentary reporting likely fraud in his work. He lost that suit in 2015, and was ordered to pay the CBC $1.6 million (CAD).
In 2010, Scott Reuben, 25 of whose papers were eventually retracted for faked data, was sentenced to six months in prison on a health care fraud charge in the U.S. However, that charge was related to his research.
For more on Chandra, see our timeline.
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A number of his papers have comments on PubPeer suggesting there may be further statistical errors in analysis that sometimes affect significance and interpretation of results.
MUN needs to do a full investigation of his work.
Also, Canada has provinces, not states.
would like to see the cause of this behaviour swiftly addressed, rather than simple band-aids over one (albeit glaringly obvious) symptom
Whats the bet he develops an allergy to air travel?
What a piece of work this guy is!
Chandra has been producing fraudulent research since 1989 and possibly before. Why, I ask myself, would he revert to producing honest research? The suspicion must be that almost all of his research is fraudulent, and there is an interesting study to be done on how many journals retract his studies. Perhaps Retraction Watch might do it.