Saudi medical journal accuses M P Shah college professors of plagiarism,fraud

SJA is the official journal of the Saudi Anesthetic Association,and is affiliated to the King Saud University.

When contacted,MPSMC Dean Dr Vikas Sinha and Dr Vandana Trivedi,one of the two academics primarily accused by the journal,said they did not want to comment on the matter. Dr Jaydev Dave,the second academic targeted by the journal,said he wished to first look into the matter before commenting.

Much of the editorial focuses on the alleged plagiarism and fraud by Dr Trivedi,one of two professors at MPSMC’s Anesthesia Department.

The SJA says Dr Trivedi submitted five articles to Anesthesia and Analgesia,an international journal,in 2009. Four were “rejected for egregious plagiarism” while the fifth was “rejected for fraud” because “Dr Trivedi reported data previously published by other investigators as her own”.

In 2010,Dr Trivedi wrote a report in the Indian Journal of Anesthesia (IJA) “describing three patients” undergoing a specific treatment. Two of the three cases “were taken verbatim from previously published case reports. A paragraph in the introduction was copied verbatim from the British Journal of Anesthesia. The figures were taken from two websites,and a previously published article from the University of Pittsburgh”,the editorial notes.

It also mentions how,that same year,five of Dr Trivedi’s articles were also retracted by the Internet Journal of Anesthesiology,which noted one of the five retracted articles contained portions for which the professor had not obtained consent for from the patients she wrote about.

A former professor and head of MPSMC’s Anesthesia Department has been credited as Dr Trivedi’s co-author in one of these retracted articles.

The other academics more recently accused of plagiarism and fraud by the SJA are Dr Dave (currently an additional professor at MPSMC) and Sandip Vaghela.

They apparently passed off as their own a set of data “identical to those from a 2006 manuscript in Anesthesia and Analgesia with an identical title”.

The duo “claimed to have performed a study… which they did not perform. This is more than simple plagiarism. Describing a clinical study that the authors did not perform is fraud,” the SJA noted.

As punishment,Dr Trivedi was removed from the MPSMC’s academic council for six months,and both she and Dr Dave have apparently been banned from publication or presentation for five years,according to SJA.

“The disciplinary action taken suggests to us that the faculty at MP Shah Medical College can engage in fraud without placing their academic careers at risk,” the editorial says,calling the college “an institution that tolerates fraud,jeopardises the integrity of the scientific literature,the well-being of their patients…”