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Published online 30 September 2009 | Nature 461, 578-579 (2009) | doi:10.1038/461578a
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Iranian ministers in plagiarism row
Nature investigation reveals duplications in papers by science and transport chiefs.
EXCLUSIVE Two Iranian government ministers have co-authored peer-reviewed papers that duplicate substantial amounts of text from previously published articles, according to an investigation by Nature.
Three journals have already confirmed that they will retract papers co-authored by Iran's science and education minister Kamran Daneshjou, a professor in the school of mechanical engineering at the Iran University of Science & Technology (IUST) in Tehran.
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More recently, the Iranian Parliament questioned the science and education minister about the case. Kamran Daneshjou has told the parliament that indeed in his paper, there is a large amount of text from earlier articles. However, Kamran Daneshjou had been unaware of this fact, because the manuscript is drafted by his student. Of course, he should have been more strict in supervising the student and he should have looked into the references. To be fair, this should not be considered a "scandal" and intentional inappropriate act of the supervisor. This is more or less "Remissness".
Ref: http://www.mehrnews.com/fa/newsdetail.aspx?NewsID=955712
Re A. Mohammadi's comment: If the student in question had produced a Nobel-winning paper, his supervisor would have not just shared in the glory, but probably taken most of the credit for it. If he did not even read the paper in question what, exactly, was his contribution? Putting your name on a paper to which you made no contribution is fraudulent and not merely negligent. If a supervisor is prepared to take the credit for a paper he has not even read, he should also take the blame if the paper has to be retracted.
Please request a confirmation of his PhD and MSc degree from Imperial College London, because 2 months ago he changed his PhD university in his website from Manchester Imperial institute to Imperial College London, and it is very confusing!!!
This is the link of his website, please check it:
http://www.iust.ac.ir/find-16.1458.873.en.html
He mentioned:
PhD,Studied for 3.5 years at Imperial Collage of London , U.K. (The Viva examination held at Amirkabir University of technology,Iran Jun 1989)
Please request a confirmation of his PhD and MSc degree from Imperial College London, because 2 months ago he changed his PhD university in his website from Manchester Imperial institute to Imperial College London, and it is very confusing!!!
This is the link of Kamran Daneshjo`s website, please check it:
http://www.iust.ac.ir/find-16.1458.873.en.html
He mentioned:
PhD,Studied for 3.5 years at Imperial Collage of London , U.K. (The Viva examination held at Amirkabir University of technology,Iran Jun 1989)
I agree that plagiarism is against good practice in science. However, I feel that the main concern of this article is not the violation of good practice in science. Let me explain briefly.
Only in a week, Nature has published two articles about Iranian politicians, authored by Declan Butler (see the other article here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/news.2009.945). I remember that less than a year ago,the same person wrote another short article about another Iranian politician (Massoumeh Ebtekar) with the emphasis that she was the "former vice-president of Iran" and "spokeswoman for the militant students holding 52 Americans hostage in the US Embassy in Tehran". See http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/4551019a .
As far as I know, these plagiarism cases are discovered by the Deja vu project, http://spore.swmed.edu/dejavu/ , or maybe similar projects. Based on the statistics published in the Deja vu website, up to now there are more than 2000 cases of confirmed duplicates, and more that 70-thousand cases of probable duplicates. These are only papers found within the Pubmed (mainly related to biology and medicine), and there are certainly more cases if you consider other fields of science and technology.
My question is: If Nature is devoted to science, why it is so much interested in the plagiarism committed by Iranian politicians, and not, for example, American professors?
This is a scandal for Nature more than anything. As mentioned above, the Iranian ministers are known for such perjuries. Even the genuineness of their degrees is questionable. Imagine a Professor (Mr. Daneshju) who claims, he has no knowledge of what his student has done in his four years of Ph.D and still passes him and sends his paper to be published!
However, anyone who has ever published a scientific paper or has reviewed one, would wonder how such a fraudulent paper got past the extensive peer-review system? Isn’t it expected that the editor and the reviewers have reasonable (if not extensive) knowledge of the field and the literature? If not, did they ever check the title of the paper in a scientific database or even google? I think Nature should follow up the review process and even report it to the readers. Was the fact that it came from an Iranian minister, was a factor in easing the review process?
To Min Mansuri;
Those articles published in different other journals and not in Nature. The failure of peer review by those journals is obvious but this point dose not help Mr Daneshjou and Behbahani regarding their fraudulent.
This article shows that both ministers are not honest not only by Iranian people but with international academic society and they have to resign as soon as possible.
Unfortunately in today Iran's situation it is politicians who direct and determine all what is going on in Iran, even scientific affairs. Real scientists have been left aside and there is a large gap between them and the government, specifically the current government. Obviously, Daneshjoo, Kordan, and Ahmadinejad are not representative people of the educated community of Iran but having the title of Dr., helps them to be successful populists.
The most important thing is that we have to distinguish between this group of politicians (under the label of Iran's scholars), and the real scientific community of Iran. Generalization is not fair.
To Mr. Gorji,
I correct my comment as the fraudulent paper was published in "Engineering with Computers " and not Nature. My apologies to “Nature “ and thanks to you for the note.
However, the fact that 4 fraudulent papers can pass the peer review system is alarming. Each review process should be investigated to see if they were all accidental or was the fact that the paper was sent by an Iranian minister a factor in easing the review process.
If you read the rest of my comments on my previous post, I have no intention of helping those who commit fraud. I think the responsible authors should face due consequences regardless of their ranks in a government. However, we would not have been discussing plagiarism , if the reviewers had done their job correctly. At least the anonymous reviews and the editors' decision should be made public.
You say that the response attributed to Majid Shahravi "refutes any plagiarism". If what you say is correct, you don't have a story, as "refute" means "to prove false". What you mean is "rebut" or "reject".
Please don't let the standards of English in Nature fall to the same dismal levels they have reached elsewhere. Does it matter ? Ask your libel lawyer.
To all those who have never reviewed a paper: most publishers do not provide any resources to help reviewers combat plaigarism! And the reason is simple, because that is NOT the responsibility of reviewers. I would curse the day if peer reviewers are reduced to what grammar/spellcheckers and computer programs doing text comparison. Seriously, even a 12 yr-old kid can do that.
And to those who think Nature is picking on the Iranian officials, trust me: if anything similar is found involving US/UK/Japan/etc. lawmakers/ministers, this Iran story won't even make the news.
BTW, I think many people understand plaigarism is not uncommon in certain parts of the world, though the appearance of these publications in international journals is not as acceptable. No need to blow these incidents out of proportion.
To H T:
I am agree with you that plaigarism is not uncommon in some part of the world, but if one minister especially science minister do such a fraud in Western country it will be a scandal and at least he/she must resign.