Wednesday
Sep022009
Iran: Busted! Would-be Minister of Science Rewrites His "Ph.D."
Wednesday, September 2, 2009 at 17:20
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"Dr." Kamran Daneshjoo, nominee for Minister of Science, Research, and Technology, we're really sorry.
We gave you a chance last month when other media were excitedly running the story that you might have lied about holding a Ph.D. from a British university. OK, so your university profile lists, for your Ph.D., the non-existent "Manchester Imperial Institute of Science and Technology". We thought that maybe there had been a mis-translation back from Farsi to English of "University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology".
And when no one could locate a Ph.D. thesis under "Daneshjoo" in the University of Manchester system, we thought that catalogues are not always complete and they might not have checked alternative spellings like "Daneshjou", and we did find one of the articles (from 2005) that you claimed on your profile.
In short, we were happy to give you a break because, if you couldn't prove you had a Ph.D., we couldn't prove that you didn't have one.
But then you had to mess it all up and make us look foolish. Seems your university profile has suddenly changed (the new profile can be verified at the website of "Iran University of Science and Technology", which does exist).
Now your Ph.D. is from "Imperial College London". Which does exist, but is about 200 miles from Manchester. And which cannot be a simple transliteration mistake from "Manchester Imperial Institute of Science and Technology". And which also does not seem to have a copy of your doctoral thesis.
Gosh, it would have been so much easier if you had just changed the entry to "UMIST". Then you could have been approved by the Parliament tomorrow with whatever diploma you have hanging on your wall, and we could have ignored this little incident.
As we tell our own Ph.D. students: "First rule in writing a thesis: if you're going to lie, keep it simple."
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Buy Us A Cup of Coffee? Help Enduring America Expand Its Coverage and Analysis
"Dr." Kamran Daneshjoo, nominee for Minister of Science, Research, and Technology, we're really sorry.We gave you a chance last month when other media were excitedly running the story that you might have lied about holding a Ph.D. from a British university. OK, so your university profile lists, for your Ph.D., the non-existent "Manchester Imperial Institute of Science and Technology". We thought that maybe there had been a mis-translation back from Farsi to English of "University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology".
And when no one could locate a Ph.D. thesis under "Daneshjoo" in the University of Manchester system, we thought that catalogues are not always complete and they might not have checked alternative spellings like "Daneshjou", and we did find one of the articles (from 2005) that you claimed on your profile.
In short, we were happy to give you a break because, if you couldn't prove you had a Ph.D., we couldn't prove that you didn't have one.
But then you had to mess it all up and make us look foolish. Seems your university profile has suddenly changed (the new profile can be verified at the website of "Iran University of Science and Technology", which does exist).
Now your Ph.D. is from "Imperial College London". Which does exist, but is about 200 miles from Manchester. And which cannot be a simple transliteration mistake from "Manchester Imperial Institute of Science and Technology". And which also does not seem to have a copy of your doctoral thesis.
Gosh, it would have been so much easier if you had just changed the entry to "UMIST". Then you could have been approved by the Parliament tomorrow with whatever diploma you have hanging on your wall, and we could have ignored this little incident.
As we tell our own Ph.D. students: "First rule in writing a thesis: if you're going to lie, keep it simple."