Persaud confesses to book plagiarism

Dr Raj Persaud, the TV psychiatrist, broadcaster and best-selling author, has admitted copying the work of other academics for his book, The Edge of the Couch, as well as plagiarising articles written for newspapers and scientific journals. Persaud, 45, made his confession yesterday before the General Medical Council, the doctors' disciplinary body. If the tribunal finds him guilty, he could be struck off the Medical Register.

Jeremy Donne QC, counsel for the GMC, said Persaud had benefited financially from the hard work and scholarship of others and had been dishonest. "Dishonesty can be inferred from his repeated conduct in plagiarising the work of academics... thereby enhancing his professional reputation." However, Persaud, who made his name as resident psychiatrist on the daytime TV show This Morning and later as presenter of the BBC Radio 4 programme All in the Mind, is claiming it was all an unfortunate mistake. He says that any plagiarism was accidental and down to omitted references or errors in the editing process.

Persaud's troubles began two years ago when, after being accused of plagiarism in a Sunday Times article, the British Medical Journal and Progress in Neurology both retracted articles written by him. This prompted an apology from Persaud, who said it was merely a "cutting and pasting error". However, following the newspaper article, a number of other cases of similar "editing errors" came to light, the most notable being in his 2003 book The Edge of the Couch, in which a vast tract of text from an article written by Professor Bentall, of King's College, London, had been simply copied out and not attributed.

Born in Reading, and educated at Haberdashers' Aske's School and University College London, Persaud was once described by his fellow media doctor Phil Hammond (Trust Me, I’m a Doctor) as someone who can do "what most consultants can't – translate med-speak into plain English".