Jamnagar Medical College - Saudi Journal accuses fraud

A Saudi medical journal has alleged plagiarism and fraud by an academics from M P Shah Medical College Jamnagar.

In the editorial of a Saudi Journal of Anesthesia (SJA), the authors expressed concerns on the plagiarism and wishes some action to be taken by Indian Council of Medical Research and the Medical Council of India.

M P Shah Medical College dean Dr Vikas Sinha and Dr Vandana Trivedi declined to comment over this issue, one of the two individuals primarily accused in this case also declined to comment on the matter, the other said they will look into the  matter.

The Saudi Journal of Anesthesia says Dr Trivedi submitted 5 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”.

Also next year, 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.

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.

Jamnagar's M P Shah Medical College is Gujarat’s second largest medical institute.