A dentist and top children's dental health professor is to face accusations of serious professional misconduct.

Mandeep Duggal, of Woodhall Park Mount, Pudsey, faces the General Dental Council charge along with fellow dentist Mar-tin Curzon, of Ripon, in rela-tion to two research projects they carried out in 2000.

The pair were hired by a phar-maceutical company to investi-gate the effects of chewing gum and a blackcurrant drink on oral health.

It is alleged data they reported was inaccurate, volunteers to the studies were not properly recruited, data was not prop-erly verified, names and ad-dress of participants were falsi-fied, as were signatures.

It is also said they failed to fol-low proper guidelines for the studies and deviated from agreed protocols without ex-planation.

Professor Duggal, who is em-ployed by The University of Leeds as a professor and head of child dental health and is a honorary consultant in paediatric dentistry in Leeds, was hired by Northern Research and Testing Limited to conduct and supervise the two commercially sponsored research projects.

Mr Curzon, also a registered dentist, is the sole director of Northern Research and Testing and his role was to supervise the projects.

Prof Duggal was supposed to recruit 26 volunteers for the chewing gum study and gain written and oral consent.

It was a requirement that none of the volunteers took part in more than one of the studies and that the study was carried out in accordance with current guidelines for good clinical practice and the regulatory re-quirements of the UK.

For the blackcurrant drink study Prof Duggal was required also to make sure each volun-teer received a screening ex-amination to make sure they were eligible to take part.

However, it is alleged the re-search was not carried out in accordance with these requirements and breaches included two employees of Northern Research and Testing Limited being recruited, volunteers taking part in both studies, inaccurate reporting of data, not verifying data and keeping incomplete and inaccurate records.

It is alleged by the General Dental Council their conduct was inappropriate, unprofes-sional, contrary to the terms of the District Research Ethics Committee approval for the studies, contrary to the main-tenance of high standards and liable to bring the profession into disrepute.

The GDC an organisation which regulates dental profes-sionals in the UK and it can take action when a dental professional may have committed professional misconduct.

In the most serious cases it can stop a dental professional from practising or limit their practice if necessary.

The case is listed to begin on Monday and the hearing will take place at the offices of the General Dental Council in Wimpole Street, London.

A spokesman for Leeds University said: "It would be inappropriate to make any comment until the outcome of the conduct committee hearing is known, at which time we will consider what action, if any, should be taken."