Indian Origin Psychiatrist Admits to Plagiarism Before General Medical Council

Prof. Rajendra (Raj) Persaud a British consultant psychiatrist and broadcaster has admitted to large-scale plagiarism. He is being investigated by the General Medical Council for misconduct.

Now aged 45, he was once described by The Spectator as "the most eminent psychiatrist of the age."

His career is in ruins now as the GMC began its hearings Monday. The GMC hearing in Manchester said his actions were "inappropriate" and "misleading." The fitness to practice panel hearing has yet to decide whether his behaviour was dishonest or liable to bring the profession into disrepute.

Jeremy Donne QC, GMC counsel, accused Dr Persaud of enhancing his own reputation at the expense of the hard work and scholarship of other people.

"The articles, we say, speak for themselves and they all demonstrate the extent Dr Persaud has appropriated the work of others as his own."

Donne revealed that Dr Persaud asked for and received permission to quote an article by a Professor Bentall for his book.

He said: "Professor Bentall gave his permission assuming that Dr Persaud would know that quotations would have appeared in parenthesis and be properly attributed.

"Having seen the passage Professor Bentall was astonished that a substantial portion of his paper had simply been copied into the book in what he believes was a deliberate act of plagiarism."

An inquiry by King's College London two years ago had also found that allegations of plagiarism against Dr Persaud "had some substance," but it decided they could be addressed at departmental level without a formal inquiry and no further action was needed.

Professor Raj Persaud is, for many, the public face of psychiatry, with numerous appearances on radio and television, BBC reports.

One of his gifts is the ability to make some of the concepts of psychiatry easily understood by the public, and much of his work has been themed on their most common preoccupations and worries.

He holds nine degrees including a first-class degree in psychology and a Masters in Statistics.

He was one of the youngest doctors appointed as a consultant psychiatrist at Bethlem Royal and Maudsley hospitals in south London. He came into the public consciousness in 1994 as in-house psychiatrist on daytime TV show This Morning.

His output has been prodigious - including the publication of more than 100 academic papers in journals and a number of books.

These included 2005's The Motivated Mind and a book on the "psychology of seduction" called Simply Irresistible.

He has even worked as an external examiner for medical schools and sits on the editorial committees for important medical journals such as the BMJ and British Journal of Psychiatry.

But nemesis is catching up with him. Dr Persaud's 2003 book `From the Edge of the Couch' has been found to contain passages plagiarised from four different academic articles written by nine authors.

Passages from an article and book by Professor Thomas Blass titled `The Man Who Shocked the World' were also plagiarised for four of Dr Persaud's articles.

Extracts from Prof Blass's work were found in Dr Persaud's paper `Why the Media Refuses to Obey' published in the March 2005 edition of 'Progress in Neurology and Psychiatry'.

Prof Blass's work was also lifted for an article 'Frailty That Allows Evil to Triumph' published in the Times Educational Supplement in February 2005.

Dr Persaud's paper 'The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram', which was published by the British Medical Journal in August 2005 also drew from Prof Blass's work.

The same applied to Dr Persaud's article 'Do You Obey Or Do You Rebel' submitted to the BMJ for publication before the end of 2005.

Back in 2005 Guardian newspaper had reported, “One allegation concerns a column on Scientology's relationship to psychiatry, printed in the Independent on June 30 this year, which appeared to borrow heavily from work by a Canadian academic who was not credited. Around 300 words of the 685-word piece were a near carbon copy of a paper by Stephen A Kent titled The Globalization of Scientology, Influence, Control, and Opposition in Transnational Markets.

Prof Kent wrote a letter of complaint to the Independent, which printed a correction on November 26 2005, saying the failure to acknowledge Prof Kent's original article was "due to a production error" and the newspaper was responsible.”

The Manchester hearing continues.

The GMC "fitness to practise panel" has the power to strike a doctor off the register.

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