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Case summary: A once-celebrated nutrition researcher fabricated data in study after study for decades — and when his own university found him guilty of scientific misconduct, it buried the report for more than ten years rather than tell the medical journals that had published his fraudulent work.

Dr. Ranjit Chandra: The Memorial University Research Fraud Cover-Up

Ranjit Kumar Chandra, born in India in 1938, built a career at Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) in St. John's as a pediatric researcher specializing in nutritional immunology — a field he liked to say he had personally founded. His published work on the immune benefits of infant formula and the effects of multivitamins on elderly memory drew international attention, including coverage in The New York Times, and in 1989 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

A Whistleblower, an Investigation, and a Buried Report

Marilyn Harvey, a nurse Chandra employed to recruit new mothers into his infant-formula studies, discovered that he had published results from a trial before she had even finished recruiting the participants it supposedly included. Her complaint triggered a 1994 investigation by Memorial University. The investigating committee's report — kept confidential for over a decade — was damning: it found no raw data existed to support the accuracy or completeness of Chandra's industry-funded infant nutrition studies, stating the committee could not identify anyone who recalled a significant amount of the reported work actually being done, and concluding that "scientific misconduct has been committed by Dr. Chandra." Rather than act on the finding, the university let the matter drop after Chandra threatened legal action and alleged bias — and Harvey was later served with her own lawsuit from Chandra, alleging she had stolen data, though it was dropped months later. Chandra remained at Memorial, continuing to publish, until 2002.

A second university investigation, completed in 2009 but likewise not released until 2015, examined a 2001 paper in the journal Nutrition on Chandra's own patented multivitamin formula and its claimed effect on memory in the elderly. That report identified 41 separate problems with the study and concluded it did not comply "with the scientific, ethical and/or integrity standards of Memorial University at the time." The 2001 paper had already been retracted in 2005.

Exposure and the Libel Trial

In 2006, CBC's The National aired a three-part investigative documentary, "The Secret Life of Dr. Chandra," examining the allegations of fraud in detail. Chandra sued CBC for libel. In July 2015, a jury found the CBC's reporting to be true, and Chandra was ordered to pay $1.6 million to cover the broadcaster's legal costs. That October, following the trial and mounting pressure, the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) formally retracted Chandra's 1989 paper on infant eczema and formula feeding — 26 years after publication — after obtaining Memorial's long-suppressed 1995 misconduct report. In a scathing editorial, the BMJ's current and former editors-in-chief called Memorial University "the real villain" of the affair, writing that the university had known of serious problems with Chandra's research for years and failed to act. In January 2016, Chandra was stripped of his Order of Canada membership.

Memorial University later created the Marilyn Harvey Award to Recognize the Importance of Research Ethics, named for the nurse whose original complaint had gone unheeded for two decades. Chandra has continued to work internationally, listing himself as president of the Nutritional Immunology and Allergy Center in India and chairman of a pharmaceutical research company there.

Timeline

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