Ranjit Chandra
Ranjit Kumar Chandra (रंजीत कुमार चंद्रा; born February 2, 1938) is an Indian-born Canadian researcher and self-proclaimed "father of nutritional immunology" who committed scientific and health care fraud. Chandra's misconduct was the subject of a 2006 documentary by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). A libel trial in July 2015, concluded that the allegations of fraud against Chandra were truthful; he was ordered to pay 5,000 for having allegedly defrauded the Ontario Health Insurance Plan. In the late 1980s, Chandra was hired by Ross Laboratories, US manufacturer of Isomil and Similac, to determine if their infant formulas could help babies avoid allergy problems; Nestlé (Good Start) and Mead Johnson had also contracted with Chandra for similar studies on their infant formulas. Chandra reported that the Nestlé and Mead Johnson formulas could protect infants from allergies, but the Ross formula could not, despite nearly identical ingredients in the three studied formulas. Marilyn Harvey, a nurse who recruited subjects for Chandra's studies and who disputed the accuracy of the number of infants reportedly enrolled in those studies, stated, "[Chandra] had all of the data analyzed and published even before we had [...] the data collected." In explaining his suspicious results to Mark Masor, then clinical research associate for Ross Pharmaceuticals, Chandra allegedly stated that "the study really wasn't designed right," although he had designed the studies himself, and he also claimed "you didn't really pay me enough money to do it correctly." In 1994, Memorial University, at which Chandra was a professor, investigated him for research fraud but its findings were kept private.