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Persaud is a popular consultant psychiatrist-author, who is best known for promoting public awareness of mental health issues through his various writings and media appearances. In 2005, he was accused of plagiarism by Thomas Blass, psychology professor at the University of Maryland, who alleged that a major part of Persaud’s article published in “Progress in Neurology and Psychiatry” (Vol. 9, Issue 2) and an earlier column in the “Times Educational Supplement” had been copied from Blass’ original work on Stanley Milgram’s 1963 “compliance” experiments without due acknowledgement. One of his articles in “The Independent” (June 30, 2005) concerning Scientology’s relationship to psychiatry was also found to have contained texts from a publication of the Canadian lecturer Stephen Kent without proper attribution.

In all these allegations, he attempted to excuse himself by blaming the editors instead. He ultimately admitted to his long history of plagiarism at a hearing conducted by the General Medical Council’s “fitness to practise panel” in 2008, when it became known that many of his popular books, articles and research papers included materials that seemed to have been “cut and pasted” from other scholars’ works and numerous internet sources. He was found “guilty of dishonesty and for bringing the profession into disrepute,” and was sentenced to 3 months suspension from practice. According to the Panel Chairman Dr. Anthony Morgan, the reason for the short length of suspension was because “the panel took into account that there had been no patient harm, that his plagiarism was not financially motivated, that it did not relate to research fraud, and that it was unlikely to be repeated.”

Hwang Woo-Suk

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Hwang is a South Korean biomedical scientist, who instantly gained international prominence for two articles published in March 2004 and June 2005 edition of the journal Science. In both of his articles, he claimed to have successfully cloned human embryos and extract stem cells from them using a new effective method with very few eggs. Prior to this declaration, it was the general consensus among researchers that making human embryonic stem cells through cloning was an impossible feat considering the complexities of primates. His success was supposed to be a promising step toward the goal of therapeutic cloning, which was to one day provide cures for degenerative diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer’s and even spinal injuries, without fear of any immune reactions.

However, this hope was dashed when one of his collaborators Roh Sung-il revealed to the media that Hwang had falsified data for 9 of the 11 cell colonies. His home university, Seoul National University, conducted its own investigation and announced on January 10, 2006 a condemning report that Hwang’s work were all based on fraudulent data. Hwang was also found to have committed a breach of ethical conduct when he paid female donors for egg donations including two of his junior researchers. He was subsequently “indicted on charges of fraud, embezzlement and bioethics law violations linked to fake stem cell research” without imprisonment. Hwang is currently maintaining a low profile work at a research center in Gweonggi Province dealing fully with animal cloning since he was banned from engaging in any human cloning studies by the government.

Eric Poehlman

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Poehlman is a former University of Vermont College of Medicine (UVM) research professor, who built a reputation as one of the foremost specialists in the field of human obesity and aging, particularly their effects on metabolism. However, his reputation started crumbling in 2001 when UVM conducted a formal investigation upon allegations of scientific misconduct by one of his research assistants, Walter Denino. It was found that Poehlman falsified and fabricated research data in about 17 research grant applications and 10 academic papers he had submitted from 1992 to 2000.

One of his more prominent papers entirely made up of invented data prescribed hormone replacement therapy for alleviating symptoms of menopause, which in reality had not been proven to be beneficial in any way but instead may be potentially harmful. All in all, he must have swindled around 3 million dollars out of federal agencies or departments. With the results of the investigation out, Poehlman agreed to a comprehensive criminal, civil and administrative court settlement; and was sentenced in 2006 to a year and a day in federal prison for his misconduct and violation of public trust, thereby becoming the first academic in the United States to be sent to jail for falsifying data in grant applications.

Victor Ninov

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Ninov, a former researcher of Nuclear Science department of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was found to have committed scientific fraud in relation to his 1999 discovery of new chemical elements 116 (ununhexium) and 118 (ununoctium). He was trained at the prestigious Association for Heavy Ion Research (Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung) in Germany, where he was acknowledged as one of those who participated in the creation of elements 110 (darmstadtium) and 111 (roentgenium) in 1994 with their experiment results confirmed by Berkeley and other laboratories around the world.

However, Berkeley launched an internal investigation when scientists failed to repeat Ninov’s results for element 118. As one of the leading authority in the use of specialized softwares to detect the radioactive decay of transuranium elements, he was the only person in the team tasked to translate the raw computer data results into readable results and had used the opportunity to introduce false data. Subsequent re-analysis of the raw data did not show evidence of his reported findings. As a result, Ninov was fired in 2001 with his reported discovery of element 118 formally retracted in 2002.

Ranjit Chandra

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Chandra, former nutrition and immunology professor of Newfoundland’s Memorial University, claimed in a study he published in the September 2001 issue of Nutrition that his multivitamin formula could improve brain function and even reverse memory degeneration in elderly people. This very same study was rejected the year earlier by British Medical Journal, citing the reason that it had “all the hallmarks of having been completely invented.” His incredible claims gained so much widespread interest that world leading experts in the field started scrutinizing his work and realized it was entirely fabricated. When pressed to submit his data for analysis, Chandra refused to cooperate, claiming he lost them; and even made threats to sue his detractors. In an attempt to strengthen his case, he published in his very own journal “Nutrition Research” a study done by a certain Amrit Jain, purportedly connected with a clinic in Jaipur India, substantiating his previous results; however subsequent investigations revealed all information about Jain and his clinic to be non-existent.

The eventual disrepute and withdrawal of his vitamin study in 2005 called into question all his previous research works including one he had done in the late 1980s, in which he concluded that Nestlé and Mead Johnson formulas could prevent allergies in babies while Ross Pharmaceuticals formula did not, despite the fact that all contained almost identical ingredients. During his divorce proceedings, it was also discovered that Chandra maintained 120 bank accounts in over a dozen countries totaling more than two million dollars, which is widely believed to have come from funds that were supposed to finance researches he never performed. Though claiming that he was holding the deposits in trust for research, most were opened jointly with his relatives.

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