Two more Australians have been caught up in an alleged predatory haematology conference due to be staged at an undisclosed venue in Sydney in July.
The ‘Hematologists Global Summit 2018’ run by Conference Series is one of over 40 scientific and medical conferences in Australia planned by the India-based company this year, which has received a ban by a US court from engaging in deceptive claims about its medical conferences.
Part of the OMICS Group, Conference Series has already been the subject of at least two complaints to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission including one over an endocrinology conference staged in Melbourne last year.
The online program for the ‘Hematologists Global Summit 2018’ bills presentations by international and Australian academics including NSW Health’s principal scientist Dr Ashraf Mina.
Dr Ashraf Mina, principal scientist at NSW Health Pathology, was listed on the program to present “When Big Data is combined with machine learning or artificial intelligence”.
Dr Mina declined to comment, however shortly after being contacted by the limbic his name was removed from the program.
In an emailed response, a spokesman for Conference Series, Augustine Isaac, said Dr Mina’s abstract had been included as a “probable talk” because the company was “in conversation with Dr Mina regarding his attendance”.
“The final scientific program would be prepared and updated 30 days prior to the conference including the exact time schedule and abstracts of the speakers who are presenting at the conference. Now that we received a request from Dr. Mina to remove his name from the program, we did update the program already.”
The ‘scientific program’ for the Summit also features Yu-Chen Enya Chen, a PhD student at the University of Queensland’s Diamantia Institute.
Ms Chen said she paid $600 registration fees in order to present a poster “Irradiated Blood for Transfusion”.
But she was feeling nervous because she did not know where the conference is to be held.
“I sent them an email last week to ask where the venue is and they didn’t get back to me. It’s in Sydney but I don’t know where,” she told the limbic.
The event appeared to be poorly organised, she said.
“Usually they will have the venue on the (web) page and contact you two months before”.