"Nature" magazine has pointed out uncanny similarities between a 2009 paper co-authored by Iran Science Minister Kamran Daneshjou and a paper that was published by South Korean researchers in 2002.
It goes on to say that "other sentences in Daneshjou's paper are identical to those in a paper given by other researchers at a 2003 conference."
Anthony Doyle, editor for the Springer journal "Engineering with Computers," told "Nature" that the journal would label the article as "retracted" online and include an erratum in the next issue.
Daneshjou has not yet publicly reacted to the report.
Daneshjou was in charge of the Interior Ministry's election headquarters during the June 12 disputed presidential vote, before being picked as minister of Education.
-- Golnaz Esfandiari
The paper by Daneshjou and Majid Shahravi from the department of mechanical engineering at the Iran University of Science and Technology in Tehran is entitled "Analysis of critical ricochet angle using two space discretization methods", and was published in the journal Engineering with Computers in 2009. In many places the text duplicates verbatim that of an earlier paper: "Ricochet of a tungsten heavy alloy long-rod projectile from deformable steel plates", published by South Korean scientists in the Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics in 2002.
It goes on to say that "other sentences in Daneshjou's paper are identical to those in a paper given by other researchers at a 2003 conference."
Anthony Doyle, editor for the Springer journal "Engineering with Computers," told "Nature" that the journal would label the article as "retracted" online and include an erratum in the next issue.
Daneshjou has not yet publicly reacted to the report.
Daneshjou was in charge of the Interior Ministry's election headquarters during the June 12 disputed presidential vote, before being picked as minister of Education.
-- Golnaz Esfandiari