The colourful career of Dr Ranjit Chandra may be old news to BMJ readers. In the spring of 2000 he sent to the BMJ a paper that claimed that a mixture of vitamins and minerals could reverse dementia in elderly people. The then BMJ editor, Richard Smith, thought that it was just too good to be true and one reviewer told him that it had all the hallmarks of having being completely invented. The full story can be read at BMJ 2005;331: 288-91

Applying the old adage that a thing isn't true until it's been on television, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has put together a documentary on Chandra made by Chris O'Neill-Yates, and broadcast it over three …