Elaboration on the Scientific theft by Kamran Daneshjou, Minister of Sciences

Change (Tehran, Iran)

Accessed from Gooya: http://news.gooya.com/politics/archives/2009/09/094049.php

24 September 2009

In part of the body of a blog post, the International Nature Journal has reported that a minister in Ahmadinejad’s current cabinet, Kamran Daneshjou, plagiarized many parts of another article into one of his own.

According to the Taghyir report, ‘Nature’ has reported that Kamran Daneshjou accomplished this act of academic theft by lifting passages from an article which was published in 2002 by a group of Korean researchers. Kamran Daneshjou tacked his own name onto many of the images and subjects of the aforementioned article in an article of his own which was published in 2008. The current Minister of Sciences even copied some of the principle parts of the [Korean researchers’] text word-for-word, yet it was still published under his own name.

Kamran Daneshjou’s article was published in the journal “Engineering with Computers”, which when compared to the original article by the Korean authors in “Journal of Physics D”, the copied parts of the article can be clearly seen.

To see Kamran Daneshjou’s article, follow this link and the original article by the Korean authors can be seen here. Kamran Daneshjou published this plagiarized article as a member of the Mechanics Department of the University of Science and Technology. Without a doubt, the disclosure of such an act of scientific thievery will have devastating effects for the ‘face’ of students and professors in Iran.

Previously existing uncertainties about Kamran Daneshjou’s doctorate degree have also been alluded to in the content of ‘Nature’. He has announced several times before that he received his doctorate from the “Royal Science and Technology College of Manchester”, but after a period of time, he changed his story saying that he received his doctorate from the “Royal College of London”.

Some of the Majles representatives also hinted at existing uncertainties about Kamran Daneshjou’s degree during the vote of confidence for Ahmadinejad’s cabinet. On the day of the confidence vote, however, the speaker of the Majles Ali Larijani announced to the assembly that Kamran Daneshjou’s degree had no problems and the Majles representatives had not even considered discussing this matter.

According to the Taghyir report, it was also determined recently that one of the other ministers of the conservative cabinet of Ahmadinejad [had committed] scientific theft. Ali-Akbar Mehrabian, Minister of Industry, registered his own and Ahmadinejad’s name on inventions stolen from others. The public court of Tehran, meanwhile, confirmed that fraud [had occurred] in the registry of the secured patent room, and orders to change names of inventors were issued. Hashemi Shahroudi*, however,  gave orders in order to protect Mehrabian from being convicted.

*Shahroudi was the head of the Judiciary at the time

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