WIKIMEDIA, VMENKOVIn 2006, the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) aired a three-part documentary about allegations of fraud against Ranjit Chandra, a former researcher at Memorial University of Newfoundland and the self-proclaimed “father of nutritional immunology.” Five years later, Chandra sued the CBC and its journalists for $132 million, claiming they had committed libel and invaded his privacy. Last week, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled in favor of the CBC “on the grounds that the words in the broadcast were true,” CBC producer Lynn Burgess told Retraction Watch.
Concerns surrounding Chandra’s work first arose in 2000 when he submitted a paper to the BMJ on a vitamin supplement he had patented. Chandra claimed to have found evidence that the supplement improved memory in elderly individuals, but BMJ editors questioned a single author’s ability to perform the extensive psychometric tests described in the manuscript, and statistical reviewers flagged hallmarks of data fabrication in the results. The BMJ rejected the paper; it was published the following year in Nutrition. In 2005, Nutrition retracted the study—after it had accrued more than 80 citations and news coverage in The New York Times. Moreover, while researchers raised concerns about other work by Chandra, none of his other papers were pulled from the literature.
“It’s ridiculous,” University of Pennsylvania ...
