Singapore: Scientists are puzzled by a similar data on MERS research published in two leading journals the first in Emerging Infectious Diseases(EID), the other later in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).
The double publication, not only has the same research but even the same patient as the subject, from Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia's former deputy minister of health, Mr Ziad Memish, and German virologist Christian Drosten of the University of Bonn had published a paper online in EID on March 20. The paper aimed at nailing in camels as the mode of transmission and studied the case of a male MERS patient from Jeddah, who was rearing his sick herd of camels and had subsequently fallen ill with the disease.

Ironically, the same data was decribed in the paper published in NEJM by the current chief scientific adviser on MERS, Mr Tariq Madani of King Abdulaziz University. The paper had full genome sequences of the virus samples obtained from the camel and the patient and hence had concluded camels as the mode of transmission.

Mr Madani accused Mr Memish of hacking his results and publishing them as his own. He explained that his group was the first to identify camels as the source of transmission and had notified the health ministry about his findings. Mr Memish argued in his defence, that the research done by him was authentic and the probable mode of transmission as 'camels', was declared by the health ministry based on his study.

However scientists over the world working on MERS criticize this as the sign of the overall scientific investigation dysfunction. They added that this is clear evidence of poor communication and inappropriate handling and surveillance of the disease.