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More papers retracted in Iran plagiarism case

Two more journals, Springer’s Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology and the Taiwanese Journal of Mechanics, have told Nature that they intend to retract, on grounds of plagiarism, 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, and his colleague. This follows an investigation by Nature published online this afternoon.

Springer had already indicated last week that they would retract another paper by the same coauthors after Nature drew attention to duplications of the text and figures from an earlier paper by Korean researchers.

Before being appointed science minister in early September, Daneshjou was also head of the interior ministry office overseeing the disputed presidential elections in June that kept Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power. This week’s story in Nature also calls into question a paper coauthored by Hamid Behbahani, Iran’s transport minister.

Meanwhile, visits by Daneshjou to Tehran University on Monday, and Sharif University yesterday, for the start of the academic year, were met with protests by students. Radio Free Europe reported:

"The student said classmates brandished copies of “Nature” magazine, the publication that recently highlighted apparent plagiarism in an article coauthored by Daneshjou. Chants rang out of “Daneshjou the Liar, where are your articles?”

Comments

  1. Report this comment

    Mohammad said:

    Danshjou has told Iranian MPs that he wasn’t aware of the details of how his student used the Korean paper. He has been quoted by Majlis member Amir Taherkhani that “a supervisor can’t control all references used by his student”.

    Source: https://alef.ir/1388/content/view/54461/ (in Persian)

  2. Report this comment

    Jack Aviran said:

    Don’t Nature and the teams have any other work other than discovering plagiarism in Iran?

    Since when, they are so careful about plagiarism?

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