Indian origin doctors in the US fight charges of fake research based on fake data

[Picheshwar]

Indian origin doctors in the US fight charges of fake research based on fake data 

Three Indian-American doctors find themselves at the centre of a raging medical research scandal, raising questions of ethics, conflict of interest and are also charged with relying on fake data

 

 

Dr Amit Patel, one of the three Indian doctors in the United States at the centre of a raging medical research scandal, has had his faculty position terminated by the University of Utah, where he was the chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery.

 

The other two, Dr Mandeep Mehra, an MD from Harvard, and Dr Sapan Desai, a surgeon in Chicago, have been charged with unethical practices. Mehra has tendered an unconditional apology and confessed that he had written or lent his name as lead investigator to several research papers without accessing the data supplied by Desai. Patel too has distanced himself from Desai, who happens to be his dal brother-inlaw. Patel who apparently introduced Mehra to Desai, has also distanced himself from the brother-in-law. The three collaborated and wrote several research papers in reputed medical journals, promoting or debunking use of specific drugs and their side effects while dealing with their efficacy in treating COVID-19 patients.

The pattern was the same. Desai’s firm Surgisphere, located in an upscale residential area outside Chicago, had supplied the data based on which the trio allegedly drew their conclusions. Both Patel and Mehra claimed to be lead investigators with access to the data which they claimed to have analysed. A study by the trio appeared in The Lancet in May in which it was claimed that the anti-malarial drug Hydroxychloroquine, promoted by Donald Trump as a magic cure for COVID and large number of the medicine was supplied by India to the US at the request of the US President, was actually not effective and had led to a higher mortality among patients.

 

 

 

But experts pointed out that Surgisphere would have required the services of a small army of professionals in different fields, including lawyers and data analysts, to process the data and make sense of them. But Desai’s company simply didn’t seem to have the manpower and resources to pull off such a feat.

Medical Journals, keen to publish scientific studies on COVID-19, were either careless or were paid in some form or the other to publish the studies, say critics.

 

Medical journals also need advertisements to survive and the pharmaceutical industry generously advertised in The Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), they point out. The journals also charge a fees for publishing research papers, fees which is prohibitive for most serious scientists. A higher fees is apparently charged for ‘pre-print’ research papers which are not peer reviewed.

[Picheshwar]

https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/indian-origin-doctors-in-the-us-fight-charges-of-fake-research-based-on-fake-data

[Picheshwar]

Surgisphere: governments and WHO changed Covid-19 policy based on suspect data from tiny US company

Surgisphere, whose employees appear to include a sci-fi writer and adult content model, provided database behind Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine hydroxychloroquine studies

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/covid-19-surgisphere-who-world-health-organization-hydroxychloroquine

[JambaKrantu]

Patel and Desai.. Lol.. Never trust  a Gujju..