In April 2023, the German Head of State Frank-Walter Steinmeier officially visited Canada. The 25 April was the momentous date when the President of Germany visited the University of British Columbia (UBC) and had the exclusive honour to meet their greatest scholar, Mohammad Arjmand, Canada Research Chair in Advanced Materials and Polymer Engineering.
Germany recognises Iranian papermill industry, one could say.
A press release by UBC from 25 April proudly declared:
President Steinmeier toured UBC Faculty of Applied Science’s soon-to-open hydrogen research platform and met researchers working on clean energy and climate change solutions, including engineering experts collaborating with German research institutions.
“We were delighted to welcome President Steinmeier to UBC and to showcase our commitment to sustainable energy and advancing research that addresses climate change,” said UBC President and Vice-Chancellor Dr. Deborah Buszard. “President Steinmeier’s visit underscores the importance of international collaboration in the field of clean energy and we look forward to continued partnership with German institutions.”
“What we saw here during our visit to British Columbia is the close cooperation between science institutions at UBC and in Germany and Canada, and this is encouraging for the future,” said President Steinmeier. “Germany and Canada are working together to make the world a better place and that means changing our daily behaviour and developing innovative technology.”
The 70-member German delegation included the Minister of Education and Research, Bettina Stark-Watzinger, First Lady Elke Büdenbender, German Ambassador to Canada Ms. Sabine Sparwasser, and representatives from parliament, business, science and culture. […]
The German President and delegation members also spoke with researchers working on challenges relating to clean energy, digital manufacturing, quantum materials and smart energy storage. Some of the highlighted projects include:
- – Dr. Mohammad Arjmand, Canada Research Chair in advanced materials and polymer engineering, leads a team that is embedding enhanced properties into next-generation nanomaterials for applications that include improving defence capabilities “
Now let me briefly introduce you to the two great men. Steinmeier is a member of the German Social Democrat Party (SPD) and used to hold various high party and government offices in Germany, including as foreign minister 2013-2017 in the cabinet of Angela Merkel. There, he made it his task to bind Germany and russia together, which resulted in Germany’s bizarre dependence on russian gas. Steinmeier also invented the infamous “Steinmeier formula” for the Minsk agreements which basically meant that Ukraine had to do everything russia tells it to do, explicitly including drop all EU- and NATO ambitions, surrender and self-dissolve, otherwise there will be war. As we know, Ukraine failed Steinmeier and there is now the biggest and bloodiest war in Europe since 1945.
Germany’s Hitler Cult- Thoughts on russia’s war on Ukraine
Sorry, German intellectuals, but you can’t have your Hitler all for yourself anymore.
In 2017, Steinmeier was elected as the President of Germany, a representative office without any political power. He was lucky to be re-elected as nation’s Head of State on 13 February 2022, just days before russia attacked Ukraine in a full-scale genocidal war (sponsored in large part with German fossil fuel money). After the 24 February, people started talking about Steinmeier’s disastrous political and economical legacy, for which he eventually apologised (not sure if sincerely, or afraid to lose his job). He was forgiven, but Steinmeier remains in Ukraine certainly not the most popular German politician.
Basically, Steinmeier has the tendency to hang out with all the wrong people. And when on his official Canada visit he arrived on 25 April 2023 to UBC for a “Tour of a pilot for smart energy systems and presentation of research projects by students from various faculties“, he was introduced to Mohammad Arjmand, an assistant professor at UBC, financed via a Canada Research Chair grant. A trash scientist who publishes papermilled trash decorated with fake data.
To be fair, it was the job of Steinmeier’s presidential office to vet the people he shakes hands with. But they must have relied on UBC, whose leadership pushed Steinmeier towards Arjmand and his team, telling the German president what an eco-friendly science prodigy their Arjmand is.
The real problem here is UBC. Ethics for them is something to wipe their bottoms with while they count the money they make with bad science.
Like in the case of another Canada Research Chair at UBC, Josef Penninger. Read here:
Mr ACE2 Josef Penninger, Greatest Scientist of Our Time
As a young Wunderkind, Josef Penninger discovered the ACE2 receptor. Now he invented the cure for the coronavirus which will work in his hands where Big Pharma failed. He was never found guilty of research misconduct and never retracted a paper. Dr Penninger is a Genius making a COVID-19 vaccine.
Arjmand’s PubPeer record is currently steadily growing, because Alexander Magazinov agreed to have a look. Other sleuths joined in.
Let us start then with a tour of Arjmand’s science.
Just so you know which circles Arjmand works in, here he is with toxic papermillers Nader Karimi and Masoud Afrand. That’s the “smart energy” technology which Steinmeier came to talk about:
Saeed Aghakhani , Ahmadreza Ghaffarkhah, Mohammad Arjmand , Nader Karimi, Masoud Afrand Phase change materials: Agents towards energy performance improvement in inclined, vertical, and horizontal walls of residential buildings Journal of Building Engineering (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.jobe.2022.104656
The paper contains many inappropriate references, including to an editorial on moth pheromones, which my colleagues determined to be generally a tell-tale sign of a papermill origin:
“The range of solid-phase transfer to PCM liquid is 1 ◦ C, according to Refs. [41–44].”
[41] N.J. Vickers, Animal communication: when I’m calling you, will you answer too? Curr. Biol. 27 (14) (2017) R713–R715, 2017/07/24/.
Yes, the Vickers Curse strikes again!
When I’m citing you, will you answer too?
What do moth pheromones on one side have to do with cancer research, petrochemistry, materials science, e-commerce, psychology, forestry and gynaecology on the other? They are separated by just one citation!
Arjmand used to be a guest editor of a papermil-infested special issue in the Journal of Energy Storage, together with the papermillers Afrand, Karimi and Cong Qi. The special issue, “Recent Advances in Battery Thermal Management“, was terminated due to incessant complaints to Elsevier by Magazinov; also the German Editor-in-Chief, Dirk-Uwe Sauer had to resign. Among other things, the special issue served as citation delivery vehicle to Afrand and Karimi. Read here:
Maybe stop accepting submissions, Herr Prof Dr Sauer?
Who needs science if you can have a 75 paper strong special edition by Afrand and Karimi? A guest post by Alexander Magazinov.
Citation scams are a classic feature of papermills: adding purchased references to paying customers provides an additional income avenue for the papermill crooks. After all, nobody is actually reading those “peer-reviewed” papers, so you can cite anything you want, moth pheromones or Afrand, nobody will notice or mind. The editors and reviewers merely check that all the buzzwords are in place. Like here:
Seyed Rasoul Mousavi , Sara Estaji , Hediyeh Kiaei , Mohammad Mansourian-Tabaei , Sasan Nouranian , Seyed Hassan Jafari , Holger Ruckdäschel , Mohammad Arjmand , Hossein Ali Khonakdar A review of electrical and thermal conductivities of epoxy resin systems reinforced with carbon nanotubes and graphene-based nanoparticles Polymer Testing (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.polymertesting.2022.107645
Needless to say, this Seyed Rasoul Mousavi fellow is scientifically a nobody, but then again, buying citations is something even a cheap nobody can afford. I don’t know how Prof. Dr.-Ing. Holger Ruckdäschel of the University Bayreuth and the Bavarian Polymer Institute in Germany (and former senior exec at BASF) ended up as co-author of this, uhm, thing, but I won’t speculate as not to get sued. It should be safe to mention that Ruckdäschel has more papers with Arjmand and Mousavi, e.g. Soleimanpour et al 2023, Mousavi et al 2022, Azadi et al 2022; plus other Iranian collaborations.
Some German scientists just like Persian delights, who can blame them.
German Authorities on Papermills and Whistleblowing
“I am not familiar with Iranian papermills!” – Prof Dr med Henning Madry, Saarland University.
Anyway, here is a paper with FORTY self-references to a DIFFERENT Mousavi, this time a Seyyed Mojtaba Mousavi (likely a brother of SR Mousavi). Pity that Prof Dr Ruckdäschel missed this:
Seyyed Mojtaba Mousavi , Seyyed Alireza Hashemi , Masoomeh Yari Kalashgrani , Ahmad Gholami , Yousef Mazaheri , Mohsen Riazi , Darwin Kurniawan , Mohammad Arjmand , O. Madkhali , Mahmood D. Aljabri , Mohammed M. Rahman , Wei‐Hung Chiang Bioresource Polymer Composite for Energy Generation and Storage: Developments and Trends The Chemical Record (2023) doi: 10.1002/tcr.202200266
“This is essentially a citation plantation with 40 (self-)citations delivered to a certain SM Mousavi. Most, if not all, are in a generic context.“
A. Magazinov
Here is one of many papers Arjman published with the toxic papermiller Seeram Ramakrishna, some fraudulent trash with buzzwords “graphene” and “nano”:
Seyyed Alireza Hashemi, Hamid Reza Naderi , Seyyed Mojtaba Mousavi , Sonia Bahrani , Mohammad Arjmand , Ayrat M. Dimiev , Seeram Ramakrishna Synergic effect of laser-assisted graphene with silver nanowire reinforced polyindole/polypyrrole toward superior energy density Carbon (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.carbon.2021.12.028
Arjmand and Ramakrishna again, now designing fantasy materials for radiation shielding:
Seyyed Alireza Hashemi , Seyyed Mojtaba Mousavi , Reza Faghihi, Mohammad Arjmand , Mansour Rahsepar , Sonia Bahrani , Seeram Ramakrishna , Chin Wei Lai Superior X-ray Radiation Shielding Effectiveness of Biocompatible Polyaniline Reinforced with Hybrid Graphene Oxide-Iron Tungsten Nitride Flakes Polymers (2020) doi: 10.3390/polym12061407
You can read about Ramakrishna here:
The Highly Cited Researchers of Clarivate
“here is my advice to Clarivate: better get lost. ” – Alexander Magazinov
The next collaboration of Afrand and Ramakrishna involved Anders Hagfeldt, who happens to be in his day-job the Vice Chancellor of the University of Uppsala in Sweden. I wrote about him in Friday Shorts: Hagfeldt is currently under investigation for research misconduct, suspected of co-authoring papermilled studies. Here, Arjmand, Ramakrishna and Hagfeldt invented a new superior superconductor:
Seyyed Alireza Hashemi , Seyyed Mojtaba Mousavi , Hamid Reza Naderi , Sonia Bahrani , Mohammad Arjmand, Anders Hagfeldt, Wei-Hung Chiang , Seeram Ramakrishna Reinforced polypyrrole with 2D graphene flakes decorated with interconnected nickel-tungsten metal oxide complex toward superiorly stable supercapacitor Chemical Engineering Journal (2021) doi: 10.1016/j.cej.2021.129396
The other paper recycling the FTIR spectra above was with same first author Seyyed Alireza Hashemi (but without Hagfeldt), and presented a gold nanoparticle thingy for rapid COVID-19 diagnostic tests for IgG antibodies of SARS-CoV-2 in blood:
Seyyed Alireza Hashemi , Sonia Bahrani , Seyyed Mojtaba Mousavi , Navid Omidifar , Nader Ghaleh Golab Behbahan , Mohammad Arjmand , Seeram Ramakrishna , Kamran Bagheri Lankarani , Mohsen Moghadami , Mansoureh Shokripour , Mohammad Firoozsani , Wei-Hung Chiang Ultra-precise label-free nanosensor based on integrated graphene with Au nanostars toward direct detection of IgG antibodies of SARS-CoV-2 in blood Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry (2021) doi: 10.1016/j.jelechem.2021.115341
The other paper by Arjmand and Ramakrishna, which recycled the image, was about a different nano-sensor designed to detect not only the coronavirus, but also the flu.
Seyyed Alireza Hashemi , Sonia Bahrani , Seyyed Mojtaba Mousavi , Navid Omidifar , Mohammad Arjmand, Nader Ghaleh Golab Behbahan , Seeram Ramakrishna , Kamran Bagheri Lankarani , Mohsen Moghadami , Mohammad Firoozsani Ultrasensitive Biomolecule‐Less Nanosensor Based on β‐Cyclodextrin/Quinoline Decorated Graphene Oxide toward Prompt and Differentiable Detection of Corona and Influenza Viruses Advanced Materials Technologies (2021) doi: 10.1002/admt.202100341
I think in expert circles such publishing practice is called piss-taking. More great science by Arjmand, Ramakrishna and Hagfeldt, this time the team invented a graphene-based thingy for blood sugar measurements for diabetics:
Seyyed Alireza Hashemi , Seyyed Mojtaba Mousavi , Sonia Bahrani , Navid Omidifar , Mohammad Arjmand, Seeram Ramakrishna , Anders Hagfeldt , Kamran Bagheri Lankarani , Wei-Hung Chiang Decorated graphene oxide flakes with integrated complex of 8-hydroxyquinoline/NiO toward accurate detection of glucose at physiological conditions Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry (2021) doi: 10.1016/j.jelechem.2021.115303
The other paper recycling the above data did not have Hagfeldt as co-author because it was about detecting alcohol in blood. No comment.
Seyyed Alireza Hashemi , Sonia Bahrani , Seyyed Mojtaba Mousavi , Navid Omidifar, Mohammad Arjmand , Kamran Bagheri Lankarani , Mansoureh Shokripour , Seeram Ramakrishna Differentiable detection of ethanol/methanol in biological fluids using prompt graphene-based electrochemical nanosensor coupled with catalytic complex of nickel oxide/8-hydroxyquinoline Analytica Chimica Acta (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.aca.2021.339407
Note that the cheaters didn’t even bother to adjust the size bar when recycling the images. Also here, where Arjmand decided to create eco-friendly epoxy coatings with the Iranian herb Asafoetida, because it’s popular in the traditional Iranian cuisine and folk medicine:
Seyyed Arash Haddadi , Saeed Ghaderi , Mohsen Sadeghi , Behzad Gorji , Farhad Ahmadijokani , Ahmad Ramazani S.A., Mohammad Mahdavian , Mohammad Arjmand Enhanced active/barrier corrosion protective properties of epoxy coatings containing eco-friendly green inorganic/organic hybrid pigments based on zinc cations/Ferula Asafoetida leaves Journal of Molecular Liquids (2021) doi: 10.1016/j.molliq.2020.114584
Epoxy coatings is a hot field, especially with nanotechnology buzzwords, so let’s flood it with trash:
Parisa Najmi , Navid Keshmiri , Mohammad Ramezanzadeh , Bahram Ramezanzadeh, Mohammad Arjmand Epoxy nanocomposites holding molybdenum disulfide decorated with covalent organic framework: All-in-one coatings featuring thermal, UV-shielding, and mechanical properties Composites Part B: Engineering (2023) doi: 10.1016/j.compositesb.2023.110785
I don’t know, the black line looks hand-drawn. Maybe Arjmand wanted to draw ruins of an ancient castle buried under sand dunes? Here is the other paper recycling that “data”, this time the nano-coatings became “smart”, which is why nobody at this allegedly elite ACS journal bothered to read beyond the title:
Parisa Najmi , Navid Keshmiri , Mohammad Ramezanzadeh , Bahram Ramezanzadeh , Mohammad Arjmand Design of Nacre-Inspired 2D-MoS Nanosheets Assembled with Mesoporous Covalent Organic Frameworks (COFs) for Smart Coatings ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (2022) doi: 10.1021/acsami.2c14542
To be fair, the Editor-in-Chief of ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, Kirk Schanze, is not exactly the kind of person you should trust your science with. Unless you want it to find itself in company with fraudsters shouting “conclusions not affected!” Like here:
Zombie fingers inside corroded nano-piecrusts
Smut Clyde is back with more fraudulent nanotechnology. This time, he presents the works of Dhanaraj Gopi, who designs fabricated surfaces for surgical implants. In Photoshop, or with a pencil.
Another citation scam authored by Arjmand, with fake spectra. Twenty citations are delivered to its co-author Hossein Molavi, because why not, the man paid good money for it. As Magazinov notes: “All are in some generic context, all but one are within bulk citations“. Anyhow, have some “smart” MOFs for water purification:
Farhad Ahmadijokani , Hossein Molavi, Mashallah Rezakazemi , Tejraj M. Aminabhavi , Mohammad Arjmand Simultaneous detection and removal of fluoride from water using smart metal-organic framework-based adsorbents Coordination Chemistry Reviews (2021) doi: 10.1016/j.ccr.2021.214037
Now look at this reference 39:
“To date, various adsorbent materials such as activated materials (e.g., alumina, carbon, sawdust, alumina-coated silica gel, coconut shell, soil sorbent, etc.), calcite, polymer materials, coffee husk, different nanoparticles, carbon-based nanomaterials, metal oxides have been applied for the effective elimination of fluoride ions from aqueous solutions [30,38–41].”
Male mice with motor disorders? Or male Iranian papermillers?
Polymer Papermillers Taking the Piss
Papermill Industry enters its Logical Growth Phage. Smut Clyde explains what coordination polymer chemistry has to do with chickenshit.
Here is something in Elsevier’s papermill outlet called Ceramics International:
Mohsen Ahmadipour , Mohammad Arjmand , Anh Thi Le , Sin Ling Chiam , Zainal Arifin Ahmad , Swee-Yong Pung Effects of multiwall carbon nanotubes on dielectric and mechanical properties of CaCu3Ti4O12 composite Ceramics International (2020) doi: 10.1016/j.ceramint.2020.05.119
Papermills must reuse the limited number of images they have. Where no research is done to supply data, one must be creative with recycling! Like here, helping fossil fuel industry to become environment-friendly, this “drilling fluids” topic seem to be popular with papermills, Magazinov tells me:
Mostafa Keshavarz Moraveji , Ahmadreza Ghaffarkhah , Farough Agin , Mohsen Talebkeikhah , Amirhosein Jahanshahi , Alireza Kalantar , Saman Fazel Amirhosseini , Mohsen Karimifard , Seyed Iman Mortazavipour , Ali Akbari Sehat , Mohammad Arjmand Application of amorphous silica nanoparticles in improving the rheological properties, filtration and shale stability of glycol-based drilling fluids International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer (2020) doi: 10.1016/j.icheatmasstransfer.2020.104625
“Fig. 1, “The FESEM images of nanoparticles (A) 12 nm (B) 22 nm (C) 54 nm.” Panels (A) and (C) show an overlap, despite described as different samples and in contradiction to the scale bars”
A similar situation, with Figure 2 of another Arjmand paper, showing allegedly different samples:
Farhad Ahmadijokani , Hossein Molavi , Majed Amini , Addie Bahi , Stefan Wuttke , Tejraj M. Aminabhavi , Milad Kamkar , Orlando J. Rojas, Frank Ko, Mohammad Arjmand Waste organic dye removal using MOF-based electrospun nanofibers of high amine density Chemical Engineering Journal (2023) doi: 10.1016/j.cej.2023.143119
There are interesting co-authors listed here, all pretending to have a solution for waste organic dye removal. First, Orlando J. Rojas, UBC professor, Canada Excellence Research Chair in Bioproducts, and the Scientific Director of the Bioproducts Institute. Frank Ko is another Canada Research Chair Professor at UBC. Two important men who probably never bothered to even read the paper Arjmand put their names on. Everything for the h-index!
Neither of these two, nor the UBC President Deborah Buszard, nor the Applied Science Associate Dean Walter Mérida (the ones who introduced Steinmeier to Arjmand) replied to my emails.
Milad Kamkar is another Iran-born assistant professor in Canada, this time at the University of Waterloo. I personally appreciate another co-author, the German Stefan Wuttke. Wuttke works in Spain, as Ikerbasque Research Professor at BCMaterials. Remember that institute? Where Ahmed Shalan published massive fraud, with the BCMaterials scientific director Senentxu Lanceros-Mendez being Shalan’s eager co-author and book editor even long after the the director opened an investigation against the fraudster?
No point of reporting Wuttke’s collaborations to Lanceros-Mendez then. Here is Arjmand again, with Rojas, Ko, Kamkar, and Wuttke, cleaning up wastewater with nanodiamonds:
Farhad Ahmadijokani , Hossein Molavi , Addie Bahi , Stefan Wuttke, Milad Kamkar , Orlando J. Rojas, Frank Ko , Mohammad Arjmand Electrospun nanofibers of chitosan/polyvinyl alcohol/UiO-66/nanodiamond: Versatile adsorbents for wastewater remediation and organic dye removal Chemical Engineering Journal (2023) doi: 10.1016/j.cej.2022.141176
Fake spectra can be funny sometimes. Look at this, in an Elsevier journal with Impact factor of 5.9, where the editors and reveiwers were so impressed by the fancy word “montmorillonite” that they read no further:
Arian Amirkiai , Mahyar Panahi-Sarmad , Gity Mir Mohamad Sadeghi, Mohammad Arjmand , Mahbod Abrisham , Parham Dehghan , Hossein Nazockdast Microstructural design for enhanced mechanical and shape memory performance of polyurethane nanocomposites: Role of hybrid nanofillers of montmorillonite and halloysite nanotube Applied Clay Science (2020)
doi: 10.1016/j.clay.2020.105816
Not if you are drunk though, then such spectra are very much expected, as a barrier to prevent pink elephants from attacking you.
To calm down, some more inappropriately recylced images with made-up size bars.
João Paulo Ferreira Santos , Mohammad Arjmand, Guilherme Henrique França Melo , Kambiz Chizari , Rosario Elida Suman Bretas, Uttandaraman Sundararaj Electrical conductivity of electrospun nanofiber mats of polyamide 6/polyaniline coated with nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes Materials & Design (2018) doi: 10.1016/j.matdes.2017.12.052
Unexpected is a mismatch between the scale bars (the horizontal edge of the overlap in one case is visibly greater than 10 μ
mμm, in another case it is visibly smaller than 10 μ
mμm). The aspect ratio might have also been distorted.”
[…] incompatible scale bars are concerning.”
The other paper recycling this data with made-up size bars was this, with only 3 common authors, Arjmand, Santos and Sundararaj (the latter is full professor at the University of Calgary, Canada):
Marines Steinmetz , Dhésmon Lima , Raíssa Ribeiro Lima Machado , Uttandaraman Sundararaj , Mohammad Arjmand , Aline Bruna Da Silva , João Paulo Santos , Christiana Andrade Pessôa , Karen Wohnrath Nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes towards electrochemical sensing: Effect of synthesis temperature Diamond and Related Materials (2020) doi: 10.1016/j.diamond.2020.108093
Now you see why UBC decided to celebrate Arjmand so much they made him a Research Chair and invited the German Head of State Steinmeier sit on meet him.
Obviously there is no point writing to UBC. As I said, I tried, nobody answers. Predictably.
But Arjmand had a previous career station in Dresden, Germany, at the Institute for Polymere Research (IPF) of the Leibniz Society, where my reporting ended up with Brigitte Voit resigning as institute’s director and society’s ombudsperson, retracting papers, and being found guilty of research misconduct. Read here:
Bad Choices in Dresden
“There is no reason for an investigation into scientific misconduct and therefore it will not take place.”
It seems, Arjmand’s host at IPF was Petra Pötschke, Head of the IPF department “Functional Nanocomposites and Blends”. She published several papers with Arjmand, including Arjmand et al 2017 or Patangrao Pawar et al 2018; in both cases the last author is Uttandaraman Sundararaj whom you just met above, with recycled images.
Now, Magazinov found this IPF study featuring Pötschke and Voit (but without Arjmand):
Yian Chen , Petra Pötschke, Jürgen Pionteck , Brigitte Voit , Haisong Qi Multifunctional Cellulose/rGO/Fe3O4 Composite Aerogels for Electromagnetic Interference Shielding ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (2020) doi: 10.1021/acsami.9b23052
These fake spectra appeared in an elite ACS journal and were cited already 100 times, and nobody noticed the forgeries. Even though the red-circled blue spectrum in Figure 2c is obviously hand-drawn. And here is another one by same team:
Yian Chen , Petra Pötschke, Jürgen Pionteck , Brigitte Voit , Haisong Qi Fe3O4 Nanoparticles Grown on Cellulose/GO Hydrogels as Advanced Catalytic Materials for the Heterogeneous Fenton-like Reaction ACS Omega (2019) doi: 10.1021/acsomega.9b00170
“Figure 2f exhibits irregularities, as if both XRD patterns are derived from the same parent pattern. The peaks in the cellulose/GO/Fe3O4 pattern may have a digital nature.”
Pötschke did not reply to my email either. Now she and Voit can thank their former guest scientist Arjmand for leading Magazinov to these fake publications.
And now, the pièce de résistance. Arjmand’s greatest achievement. Everyone stand back and prepare to applaud. You will turn green with envy, I promise.
Ready?
Ta-da:
Yes of course Arjmand and the scamference fraudster Ashutosh Tiwari found each other! Of course Arjmand is proud of his fake fellowship in Tiwari’s fictional International Association of Advanced Materials (IAAM) which he obtained at Tiwari’s predatory conference! Of course Arjmand is a regular visitor at these scamference events! Of course UBC is proud to pay for it!
The Indefatigable Ashutosh Tiwari
Four years after Ashutosh Tiwari’s scamferences and research fraud were exposed, his impressive-sounding yet fictional “International Association of Advanced Materials”, or IAAM, still opens doors, hearts and wallets.
I for my part can’t wait to see Steinmeier visit Ashu Tiwari in his tiny village of Ulrika, maybe on an official trip to Sweden. Maybe the German President can open the next IAAM scamference?
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For Better Science 
I believe Tiwari is a regular FBS reader. He certainly needs always new names of worthy candidates for its bogus awards and conferences.
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You might be right. Dang, I provide Ashu with a steady stream of customers!
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Academic science is broken beyond any hope for repair. It is not only charlatans to be blamed but fools and egomaniacs in high positions and prestigious universities whose primary responsibility and loyalty lies with power, money, self-recognition, ego, and their stupid legacy. It is sad to see how actual scientists and postdocs driven away from academia because they can’t compete with such charlatans who also happen to be the main operators of paper mills.
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If you don’t cheat you can’t compete.
Sounds just like athletics!
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‘… Bullshitting, communication characterised by an intent to be convincing or impressive without concern for truth, is ubiquitous within human societies. Across two studies (N ¼ 1,017), we assess participants’ ability to produce satisfying and seemingly accurate bullshit as an honest signal of their intelligence.’
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/14747049211000317
Hmm… so…. research fraud… an honest sign of intelligence?
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“the editors and reveiwers were so impressed by the fancy word “montmorillonite” that they read no further”
Sounds better than “clay”.
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Not really fair giving them a hard time for using the term montmorillonite. There are many different types of clays, specifying which one is proper – in fact, required – scientific practice. Montmorillonite is not a synonym for the generic word clay.
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I am writing to address the unfair criticism that has been directed towards scientific work, specifically something like self citation that is ridiculous that you do not know any paper need self citation to prove the continous of process. It has come to my attention that certain individuals or groups have made inaccurate and unwarranted claims about some researchers, and I believe it is important to provide a response to clarify any misconceptions and defend the integrity of peoples work.this is obvious by repeating iran nationality many times that you have other problems with researchers instead of honesty. Respect all peoples and their hardworking without judging anyones nationality.
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It has come to my attention that your IP address is in Vancouver, Canada. Hello Dr Arjmand.
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Dr arjmand? 😂It’s like you’re hallucinating
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Chickenshit 😉
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I am a student at UBCO in Kelowna. I was interested in the article and was excited to read it as it is the hot topic on campus in the Engineering department.
@Mehdi is correct in that there are relevant and legitimate causes for self citation. I do not know if Dr. Arjman had legitimate reasons for self citation in his work, but in cases of continued research it makes total sense why someone would cite their own work.
And @Mehdi is also correct in that there are xenophobic undertones in this article towards Iranian researchers. You started the article with “Germany recognises the Iranian papermill one could say.” And there was no reason to bring up the fact that Milad was born Iran when you said “Milad Kamkar is another Iran-born assistant professor in Canada,” you could have easily said “Milad who was a PDF under Arjaman’s guidance” instead.
The fact that you (@Leonid) repeatedly attack IP addresses because they come from British Columbia is ignorant and short cited. People at UBC are talking about this article for obvious reasons and it would make sense that people from our community would want to engage in discourse about the article. Despite the fact that I have never met Dr. Arjman, I am sure I will be accused of being a part of his research group or something simply because I am composing this comment in Kelowna.
I think it is incredibly important that there are people like @Leonid to keep the academic community honest in their work, and I was planning on giving a donation while reading the article for you to continue your work, but you have lost all of my respect in this comment section. Rather than replying or debating the criticism you have chosen to baselessly accuse people of being Dr. Arjman and calling people “chicken shit” or “dimwhit”. Why does it matter even if it is Dr. Arjman, you still could have addressed the comment without resorting to childish name calling.
All this being said, I appreciate the article and your dedication to holding the academic community accountable. I look forward to reading more from “For Better Science” as this was my first introduction to the website.
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I haven’t been accused of racism for some time already, but here you arrived. Look, I’ll make it simple for you : I’m ethnically Jewish. From Ukraine. See, now you are even happier you didn’t donate.
Goodbye.
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The ones in question are not. Like if you wrote, “The water is wet (Molavi, 2022a; Molavi, 2022b, Molavi, 2022c). The sky is blue (Molavi, 2023a; Molavi, 2023b; Molavi, 2023c).” To check this, one doesn’t even have to read beyond this post.
But the core of this scam network is indeed in Iran. And indeed, one of the focuses of this network is bringing Iranian “researchers” of unclear qualification to Canada and other Western countries. And what if a few are not “researchers” at all, but rather IRGC operatives? Should we blur these risks in fear of being called “xenophobic”?
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@Magazinovalex, Fair enough. This article shows in very clear terms that Dr. Arjmans science is sketchy to say the least, and fraudulent at its worst. So I wasn’t trying to argue on his behalf. I was just mainly trying to acknowledge the fact that these criticisms could have been addressed.
And @Magazinovalex, please excuse my ignorance but as I said this is my first time hearing of the website “For Better Science”. I have had only positive experiences working with Iranian colleagues, and I have had the privilege of working with BEYOND qualified and brilliant researchers from Iran. Could you please point me in the direction of where I could learn more about why or how the core of the issue is in Iran?
@Leonid You don’t need to get so butt hurt every time someone criticizes you.
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Next time don’t gratuitously call people “xenophobic” to score cheap points and to try to discredit them. This ain’t Twitter but my site. You can withdraw your racism accusation, or go comment elsewhere.
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Okay, for a start, perhaps, five earlier posts from this site, in chronological order.
1) https://forbetterscience.com/2022/06/27/wiley-committed-to-integrity-get-out/
2) https://forbetterscience.com/2022/08/23/maybe-stop-accepting-submissions-herr-prof-dr-sauer/
3) https://forbetterscience.com/2022/10/19/the-incredible-collaborations-of-renaissance-men-and-women/
4) https://forbetterscience.com/2022/12/14/german-authorities-on-papermills-and-whistleblowing/
5) https://forbetterscience.com/2023/04/03/taras-persidskyy-and-arik-of-negev-shaheed-hunters/
And a bonus, not really focused on Iranians, but it is very entertaining to dig deeper into Webster’s network, especially its Ebrahim Mostafavi and Navid Rabiee branches.
6) https://forbetterscience.com/2020/03/19/thomas-webster-to-save-the-world-with-covid-19-nanoparticles/
On top of that, one link from PubPeer (please, check Wikipedia who this Zolfigol dude is).
https://pubpeer.com/search?q=authors%3Azolfigol
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I was just calling it as I see it. If there is a relevant reason for calling out peoples nationalities I am open to being further educated on the topic. If Iran is known for academic dishonesty, that is something I was unaware of and am interested to learn more about. But from an outsiders prospective reading the article it felt like there were broad strokes being painted across an entire community of people for what I thought was no reason.
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Did you notice I call out EVERYBODY’S nationality? Even of Germans? That’s how xenophobic I am?
On another note:
Iran is a totalitarian terror state. The regime murders its own people and Ukrainians.
Science is always affected by totalitarian regimes. Iranian science is rotten, russian also, people who make academic career there are collaborators or outright crooks, and you can call me a russophobe now for all I care.
In your next comment you either retract your accusation of xenophobia or you won’t comment here again.
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I’m sorry man. I am being unreasonable. Yes there are objectual statements in your comments, and in the article. But I’m being unnecessarily nit picky and kind of a prick. Its your website, you should have the right to comment as you please. Ultimately it was an incredibly well researched and written article. I don’t know you at all, so I shouldn’t be in a place of making accusations against your character. I would delete my comments if I knew how to but I can’t figure out how to do so. With it being your website, if you are able you can go ahead and delete them for me. I look forward to reading more in the future.
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Distinguished scientist at UBC..
https://www.bccrc.ca/dept/tfl/people/connie-eaves
https://pubpeer.com/search?q=Connie+Eaves
Sandra E Dunn might be the wrong sort.
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I have done my Ph.D. in the Schulich school of engineering at University of Calgary almost the same time Mr. Arjmand was there. I have seen craziest thing there.
While I was struggling publishing my third paper at my fourth year, some master and Ph.D. students in the engineering (from this particular group and other groups) had more than 10 publications per year :)))). These students collect most of scholarships and awards in the engineering faculty, haha. Real congratulations!
At an event hosted by the Schulich School of Engineering, two female students were honored with leadership awards. Who were these individuals??? They happened to be the organizers of the event itself, responsible for selecting the committee members for the awards beforehand, and hosting the event. BUT DO NOT WORRY! To avoid any conflict of interest, both hosts announced the name of the other host when presenting their respective awards.
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Thanks for your comment. Are there any online records of that leadership award event?
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Thank you for the comment!
“While I was struggling publishing my third paper at my fourth year, some master and Ph.D. students […] had more than 10 publications per year” – what kind of culture is this? Three papers by a PhD student are already an impressive achievement, regardless of the field; were they pressuring you into catching up with the 10-paper fellas?
I am really interested in those Uni of Calgary affairs. If you have any insider info on that: like who lobbied inviting Arjmand there, who are other members of this circle, etc., etc. – please share the info with Leonid. There is a contact form on this site: https://forbetterscience.com/about/
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How people can believe your bullshit article about this smart prof?
It seems you got a good funding for all of these false information.
Remember! When you want to shit on your politicians it doesn’t mean all people he met was piece of his shit like the writer of this article.
I personally checked his profile and found him one of the cleaver scientists in Canada.
Non of the information in this article about his research is not true and it is not any evidence between your shit president and this scientist.
That is why your country politicians like to take a picture with this intelligent prof from one of the best universities in Canada.
The only thing weird for me is Canadian politicians silence about this article if they saw it.
I am pretty sure is your politicians need to come to Canada and make this show off pictures for their people and show them that they will make a dream country with smart people like Canadian smart professors.
Shame on you, your publication and your politicians.
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Arjmand, you dimwit, I can see your Vancouver IP address.
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” None of the information in this article about his research is not true ” Double negative, Arjmand, means you say everything in the article is TRUE.
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For sure you are not a journalist! Even you cannot hear any opposite comments.
You stick every comment you see against the article to Arjmand.
How you check the sender’s ips? It seems your chat gpt article creator can diagnoses ips. Hahaha!
Is my ip from Vancouver as well?
Am I Arjmand?
How much you got to attach you shity government to the Canadian scientists?
Listen! Germany need basic development many many years to have a peaceful government like Canada.
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British Columbia IP address again, you moron.
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Arjmand, you cannot even put a few words of English together and you pretend to run a lab in Canada? Seriously?
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Reading the comments make me wonder why no one could provide any professional scientific documents to prove the claims in the article wrong!
Unfortunately, I worked in Arjmand’s team for a while, and I witnessed numerous unethical actions, and in some cases, even illegal ones. His primary focus was on publishing research papers, with little regard for thoroughly examining the accuracy of the data generated by his students. Some might view this as a display of trust in his students, but in my opinion, it simply demonstrates convenient negligence.
His students could be categorized into two groups: those who followed his approach (some of whom had higher citation counts than experienced university professors) and received all the praises, and those who aimed to conduct authentic, high-quality research but were always criticized for not publishing numerous papers.
A significant portion of his students was from Iran and pursuing their studies in Canada was part of their immigration plan, particularly for young men hoping to avoid mandatory military service in Iran. Given these circumstances, they were often too afraid to voice their concerns, fearing the loss of their funding (which serves as the primary source of income for graduate students) and their Canadian visas. Even after graduating, most of them remain silent, hopeful that they will receive recommendation letters from Arjmand to aid them in their job search.
I remember him advising students that in Canada, it’s important to keep in mind that a supervisor’s recommendation letter may be necessary even 10-15 years after graduation. Consequently, if their performance is not satisfactory, they won’t receive a recommendation letter. On a few occasions, I overheard him telling his Iranian students that they have no future in Iran, urging them to work hard here.
Sadly, most students are unaware of their rights and the support they can seek from the university, causing them to endure these behaviors in silence. I hope this article reaches the individuals with the authority to implement necessary changes.
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This is a smart comment. Well said. The website wouldn’t let me press the like button for some reason, but i like this comment.
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Arjmand’s group thinks students should make results for publishing papers even if those results are fake. Although this doesn’t need to be told him. Many graduate students and postdocs left his group and others are trying to escape and find another supervisor. Your research paper might be stolen by others without putting you as the main author. You have to add other names unrelated to your research when he asks but without question it. Arjmand collaborates with people from any backgrounds in academia and industry to only increase his number of papers and citations. Along with Milad Kamakar that used networking and cheated results to get a position at the University of Waterloo and made his results seem real by working with famous names don’t get surprised if you see these names Ahmadreza Ghafarkhah, Farhad Ahmadijokani, and Alireza Hashemi in future academic positions. They are all part of a group that works together to papermill as many as they can quickly. UBC Okanagan and other universities don’t care about these things, and these fake “professors” know how to cheat the system to get academic jobs, funds, etc. I am already sorry for those who must study under their corrupt supervision. It’s sad for the students. People like Arjmand are making academia fraud compared to the when real scientific researchers were working.
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As a scientist I am so sad to read this article.
We should not let people like Arjmand to drag science down easily.
We need a campaign to ask for his resignation.
It is such a shame for UBC and Canada who gives this opportunity to him and never monitor his work.
I will send this article to UBC heads and Canada Research Council. They should know where their funds go.
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Here’s a new acquisition of Arjmand’s group at UBC: Sara Rostami!
This name is very familiar to me. But before I give my version of her profile, here a bio in a recent RSC publication https://doi.org/10.1039/D3MA00049D
“Sara Rostami is currently serving as a Visiting International Research Student (VIRS) at the School of Engineering, University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus. She is working under the guidance of Dr Mohammad Arjmand, and her research mainly centers on thermal management systems, PCMs, and nanomaterials. Furthermore, Sara is also actively involved in exploring the domains of 3D printing and liquid-in-liquid printing of hydrogels and inks based on 2D nanomaterials.”
One can also see her Google Scholar profile: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=tt3PGDQAAAAJ&hl=en
And Dimensions, too: https://app.dimensions.ai/discover/publication?search_mode=content&and_facet_researcher=ur.014216314465.20
Sure, no one is surprised nowadays to see a research student with 70+ publications and 2600+ citations.
Well, this Rostami lady is on the radar for quite a while. In fact, she is from the “second” generation of Iranian nano-fraud, the same generation as Masoud Afrand, Davood Toghraie and Arash Karimipour. For the context, the “first” generation are the two Babol Noshirvani gurus, Davood Domiri Ganji and Mohsen Sheikholeslami; there is a post on them in this blog by Maarten van Kampen: https://forbetterscience.com/2023/03/08/bottom-of-the-barrel-nanofluids-chamkha/
And for that reason Rostami indeed appeared in an earlier post from this blog: https://forbetterscience.com/2022/06/27/wiley-committed-to-integrity-get-out/
“Young stars of Iranian magnetohydrodynamics
Masoud Afrand, Davood Toghraie, Mohammad Hemmat Esfe and Arash Karimipour. // These are the four most productive, but nomen illis legio: Seyfolah Saedodin, Rasool Kalbasi, Sara Rostami, Mohammad Akbari… // The main story about them is plain and simple: they appeared out of nowhere around 2015 and began churning out nanofluid-themed papers.”
What is Rostami’s favourite journal? Heck, it’s Springer’s Journal of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry. A very familiar one, check this Google Docs presentation, from March 2021: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PRqr2pLnNqY6OzDDqesnX86yhZL6wDVv/view
Who are the two most frequent co-authors of Rostami? Davood Toghraie and Masoud Afrand (23 and 11 papers). Shared second is Aysan Shahsavar Goldanlou (11 papers), whose affiliation is recorded by Dimensions as Duy Tan University, a huge red flag, if you check my above-referenced post.
Also, Rostami gets a check mark for a paper in Afrand’s scam “special issue” in Journal of Energy Storage, read about it here: https://forbetterscience.com/2022/08/23/maybe-stop-accepting-submissions-herr-prof-dr-sauer/
Here’s the paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.est.2022.104686
“Batteries are produced in different types, shapes, capacities, and dimensions for different applications [1,2]. Many electronic devices have batteries [3–5]. Rechargeable batteries are very important in various industries [6,7].”
“[7] M.A. Ashraf, C. Li, D. Zhang, D. Ross, Retraction notice to “Battery thermal management with conjugate heat transfer in heat sink with Fe3O4/CNT-water
nanofluid using lattice Boltzmann/finite volume method” [CEP 146 (2019)
107708], Chem. Eng. Process. Process Intensif. 155 (2020) 108020.”
Yes, citing a retraction notice. Because it doesn’t matter what to cite, no one reads these porn stories anyway. For entertainment, you can read on who is David Ross, and why that retraction notice was issued, here: https://retractionwatch.com/2022/08/02/14-retractions-for-researchers-who-falsely-claimed-us-physicist-as-co-author/
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Meanwhile:
Professor Milad Kamkar has been awarded the 2023 Early Career Award by the Polymer Processing Society.
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He has collaborated with Kamran Bagheri Lankarani in many of his papers. Do you know who this guy is? The former minister of health in Iran. Very close to President Ahmadinejad, the racist former president
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Dr. Arjmand is one of those academic supervisors who is capable of any unethical behavior to gain promotion and fame. He pressures students to publish papers using any means possible, including fake collaborations with other universities, and data falsification. His lab has been lacking safety measures for conducting some chemical reactions and projects, but due to his unstoppable desire for paper publication, he doesn’t care if his students work on unsafe experiments. This causes a series of critical incidents, such as bottle explosion, posing a serious risk to lab members’ lives and the environment.
He has created a toxic workplace, promoting destructive competition among team members, who are 90% international students, vulnerable and not familiar with their rights in the new country. Despite multiple reports by his students, the School of Engineering at UBC-Okanagan has ignored them, encouraging him to continue this behavior.
Many people are closely observing UBC’s response to the toxic behavior of this inhumane supervisor. Hopefully, the new Director of the School of Engineering is different from the former one who was responsible for this issue by ignoring it. It is crucial that UBC puts an end to this corruption there.
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I work on the same campus as Arjmand. His group is not the only one with questionable research ethics. There’s a serious cultural problem in the School of Engineering, of which Arjmand is part.
The former Associate Dean of the School of Engineering is Rehan Sadiq and it was under his watch that Arjmand was hired. Sadiq is now provost of the UBC Okanagan campus, a position he’s held since September 2022. I’d be interested in knowing how the provost, who seems to be trapped in administrative meetings for most of his working week, can find the time to publish more than 40 papers in 2023 alone (https://scholar.google.ca/citations?hl=en&user=Pco9qYEAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate). It’s quite a feat to manage publishing, on average, one paper per week without resorting to unethical practices such as gratuitous authorship.
The example of how to behave as an academic is set by the campus leadership. Those who engage in academic research with integrity will unfortunately lose out because of the unethical practices of these engineers.
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Dr. Arjmand is an academic supervisor known for doing unethical things to get promoted and famous. He pushes students to publish papers no matter what, even if it means pretending to work with other schools or changing data.
He also tries really hard to hire students with fake backgrounds but a high number of fake publications, like Alireza Hashemi, Milad Kamkar, Ahmadreza ghaffarkhah, Parisa Najmi, and Navid Keshmiri. If you look into them, they all end up with the same assistant professor job, just like Milad Kamkar. Kamkar is always introducing himself as a rheologist and rheology experts are not stopping him. You should also check out Elnaz Erfanian. She’s only been the main author on three papers (all written by Kamkar), but somehow has a h-index of 8. If you look at the papers, Arjmand and Kamkar’s loop of connections are present as authors in all of them.https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xzDfJFYAAAAJ&hl=en
She has weak knowledge but right now she is a visiting student at Harvard University. Both Elnaz Erfanian and Majed Amini (another Ph.D. student from Arjmand’s group) are visiting scholars in the same research group at Harvard University. It is disappointing that Harvard University and its professors are not fully evaluating the students and this helps them to build up their resume with no knowledge.
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Elnaz Erfanian is girlfriend of Milad Kamkar. FYI
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Three fresh Arjmand pieces. Everything as expected: Wuttke, Rojas, Kamkar. Also the fresh recruit Sara Rostami.
https://pubpeer.com/publications/6B457495A41B340CA0EF52083403F7
https://pubpeer.com/publications/F3A566753A3603D7EA93D21DC8A7B7
https://pubpeer.com/publications/A8BA0736F9E333727B3DD5D3A0BA3F
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I’ve had friends who worked with Arjamand and I know the story.
It’s sad. I had the same experience working with another professor. Amit Kumar at university of Alberta.
Check him out, millions dollars of finding every year, many papers every year, each MSc student two papers, PhD 5-6 papers.
Level of research not that good. Many problems with the methodology, results doesn’t make sense etc.
Look at this review paper
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032117309164
With so many citations and this paper references 460 references. For every single basic fact they listed many references.
Look at the same student, thesis
https://era.library.ualberta.ca/items/6a3fb947-f8ba-40a3-8f1d-248eba75632b/download/7ab67bc6-7f67-4106-aa9a-f4df9705d04d
He has 90 pages for his list of references. Is not that stupid fake?
He later went to university of Calgary as post doc for around two years, not a single paper published. Because apparently other professors doesn’t publish that way and they actually do the research
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