Iran Science Officials In Plagiarism Flap

Abstract

![Figure][1] Daneshjou. CREDIT: REUTERS Four scientific journals have retracted research articles by top Iranian government scientists, including the minister of science, after concluding that they include plagiarized material. The flap started late last month when Nature reported that much of a 2009 article in the journal Engineering with Computers was copied verbatim from a 2002 article by South Korean researchers in the Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics . Both articles describe experiments involving tungsten alloy rods ricocheting off steel plates. The first author on the 2009 paper is Iran's science minister, Kamran Daneshjou, who wrote it with his former Ph.D. student Majid Shahravi, an engineer at the Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST) in Tehran. Nature subsequently reported plagiarism in two more articles by the same pair. Iranian emigre scientists have expressed outrage and noted with irony that Daneshjou helped orchestrate the election—widely rejected as a fraud—of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But some researchers in Iran are sticking up for Daneshjou and pointing the finger at his co-author. “After [Shahravi] has officially admitted his complete fault on this matter, he must be punished accordingly,” says engineer Seyyed Hasheminejad of IUST. In an interview with Iranian media, Shahravi denied any plagiarism, noting that articles by others had been cited in footnotes. Late last week, the plagiarism scandal had widened to include a 2006 paper co-authored by Iranian roads and transportation minister—and Ahmadinejad's former Ph.D. adviser—Hamid Behbahani. [1]: pending:yes