The publisher has decided to pull the special edition honoring the plagiarized Professor Kishor Wasan after receiving requests from Retraction Watch. Well, let’s go right in and discover more about him:
Professor Kishor Wasan: A Brief Introduction
From 2014 until 2019, controversial Canadian pharmacologist Professor Kishor Wasan was dean of the University of Saskatchewan College of Pharmacy and Nutrition. He removed a book review that raised questions about his academic honesty as president, among other problematic decisions.
Wasan was highly criticized for his leadership style and policies as associate dean of research and graduate programs at the University of British Columbia’s Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences from 2011 to 2014.
He was distinguished in his prior employment before becoming dean by this experience. Though he was head of pharmaceutics at UBC and national director of the Canadian Summer Student Research Program, his administration faced criticism from students and colleagues.
Wasan’s research on lipid-based medication delivery and lipoprotein-pharmaceutical interactions is questionable despite his claim to have published over 550 peer-reviewed articles and abstracts.
His prospective participation in founding and co-directing the Neglected Global Diseases Initiative at UBC is clouded by academic and professional issues. Professor Kishor Wasan’s career has been marked by controversy and questionable decisions.
What precisely happened in the case of Professor Kishore Wasan?
Both good and bad things have happened at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto in the last year.
Professor Kishor Wasan will be joining the faculty as a dean and professor going forward, the institution announced in July 2018.
In the meanwhile, less than a year after being appointed, in June 2019, Professor Kishor Wasan announced his resignation.
After co-authoring a book review that was published in The Lancet, Professor Kishor Wasan announced his resignation.
Renowned author and Globe and Mail columnist André Picard copied and pasted lengthy passages from a different review of the same book into the one that addressed Canada’s healthcare system.
The Lancet withdrew the review that Professor Kishor Wasan co-authored because it was too close to Picard’s writing.
It is crucial to keep in mind that Professor Kishor Wasan was not charged with plagiarism in the retraction letter. Rather, he claimed that to provide more room for their ideas in the final publication, he and his colleagues had left out a reference to Picard’s work.
There’s a surprising parallel to Picard’s criticism—they didn’t properly modify the wording to include their viewpoints.
While he denied deliberately deceiving anybody, Professor Kishor Wasan acknowledged his role in the situation.
The uproar surrounding the retraction and the similarity in the ratings almost caused him to lose his appointment as dean of the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy.
Following his departure, Lisa Dolovich, a fellow faculty member, was named interim dean for one year. Professor Wasan’s tenure as Dean of the University of Saskatchewan College of Pharmacy and Nutrition officially expired in June 2019, hence he will no longer be serving in that role.
One incident was the resignation of a chosen dean from the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto because a book review that was later withdrawn had a resemblance to the writings of another author.
The faculty’s temporary deanship as a result of this incident had a big effect on Professor Wasan’s career.
Professor Kishor Wasan: The Consequences
As it turns out, the academic journal publisher MDPI had intended to release a special edition of “Pharmaceutics” in recognition of the contributions made by the late Professor Kishor M. Wasan.
Retraction Watch, which monitors and reports on research retraction and ethical issues, informed the special issue co-editors that Professor Wasan had resigned because of plagiarism.
It was shown, in particular, that Professor Kishor Wasan had plagiarized a 2019 book review that had appeared in The Lancet. Copying someone else’s words, ideas, or works and passing them off as your own without acknowledging the source or obtaining permission is called plagiarism. This is a major ethical and academic faux pas.
After retiring from his position as dean of the College of Pharmacy and Nutrition at the University of Saskatchewan, Professor Kishor Wasan is currently serving as an adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia, as well as the chief medical and scientific officer at Skymount Medical and the director of research at iCo Therapeutics Inc. In response to a request for comment, he did not provide any remarks.
There was a special edition that MDPI pulled before this. 2018 was the year that this occurred as a result of the editor’s fabricated credentials. The following is what we reported to The Scientist at the time, and it seemed a little bit like something we had before:
What is MDPI?
MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute) publishes peer-reviewed scientific journals that are available to the public online. While Shu-Kun Lin originally intended for it to serve as a repository for chemical samples, it has now expanded to publish more than 390 open-access, peer-reviewed publications.
Among the world’s most prominent publishers of scholarly journal articles, MDPI ranks high. And it’s the journal that puts out the most open-access publications.
Known for their very rapid manuscript processing rates, MDPI published more peer-reviewed publications between 2016 and 2020, with yearly increases of more than 50% in 2017, 2018, and 2019. According to the assessment, out of the 3,500+ papers published in 2022 by 26 open-access “mega-journals,” 11 (or 42%) were from MDPI.
Conclusion
Finally, Professor Kishor Wasan, a controversial pharmacologist, has been under intensive investigation throughout his academic career.
His well-publicized book review reversal was one of many contentious moves he took as dean of the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Pharmacy and Nutrition from 2014 to 2019.
Leadership issues were also raised in his former University of British Columbia Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences roles.
Although Wasan claims significant publication, the quality and originality of his works have been questioned. His suspected plagiarism in a 2019 Lancet book review tarnished his reputation, prompting his resignation as a candidate for dean of the University of Toronto’s Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy.
In response to Retraction Watch’s petitions, MDPI revoked a special edition commemorating him, highlighting his career issues. This act and a habit of unethical conduct and questionable judgments have overshadowed Wasan’s academic and pharmacological achievements, casting a lasting scar on his career.
Medical Fraud News: Scott Kamelle Case Update (2024) – Huff Press (huffingtonpress.com)
