Times Higher Education ranks Alexandria University the world's #4 in research

You'd think because I am Egyptian and wish the best for my country, I should feel happy when I read the surprising news that my University, Alexandria, moved from its ranking # of 5888 last year to #147 worldwide this year.  But because I love my country I raised the red flag immediately after I saw the obvious fraud committed by another Egyptian -selfish one though.  His name is Mohamed El Naschie who manged in the past decade to conspire with another fake Chinese scientist where both cited one another's papers, which spiked the Alexandria's citation ratio from almost zero to 96% -ahead of Harvard's.  The results are: the #5888 rank climbs to #147 -amazing!

Then if you are from a culture that claims to be the best people God has created to mankind "وكنتم خير أمة أخرجت للناس", wouldn't you reject the undeserved credit and give it to those worthy of claiming it?  That's not what happened.  Alexandria University hastened to self-congratulate and considered the unexpected jackpot a gift from Allah who defeated the Israelis who didn't come close to the top 200!

I sent a letter after letter to the Times and urged them to retract their erroneous ranking but heard nothing back.  Below is one of the letter I sent:

You would agree that it is your responsibility to fact-check the information according to which you announce to parents around the world the best educational institutes worthy of receiving their hard-earned money.  Yes you did them a great favor by saving them on the laborious research. Yes you did the legwork for them.  However, if you fail to verify the veracity of the information collected, you could harm them instead. 

Now, I urge you to check the 96% citation reported by Alexandria University and you will find that 99% of them were fraudulent.  Yes, fraudulent!  A man by the name of Mohamed El Nachaei colluded with Alexandria University for the past ten years to achieve that rank you just proclaimed.  They started a fake journal, of which Mr. El Nachaei was the chief editor and approved his own useless papers which he published with an astounding rate of four per month.  Then he contacted his co-conspirer from China to cite the fake papers –a favor that Mr. El Naschie would return of course by citing those of the Chinese counterpart, resulting in the skyrocketing of fraudulent citations.  It was through this strategy Alexandria University ranked above Harvard, MIT and many other research institutes in the world.  

All the while El Naschie is the laughing-stock of Egypt. In fact, there is a website dedicated to show his scientific irrelevance: 

Please visit: http://elnaschiewatch.blogspot.com/2010/02/egyptian-physicists-who-do-real-physics.html

Eventually the stories circulating resulted in an all out scandal forcing El Naschie to step down as publisher. To date he has yet to publish a single scientific paper.  Instead, he writes for a local magazine having nothing to do with science.  

Please view those fake citations yourself at: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=find+a+m.naschie&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE=

Please consider revising your decision and tell parents the truth before many become harmed and victimized by your -so far- innocent error.  It is your moral responsibility to your readers and will speak volumes of your courage in the future to acknowledge your erroneous findings.  It's the only way to regain trust before the truth, which is already percolating, is revealed by angry deceived victims.

Thanks,

VE

After the letter I added a comment or two on the following article:

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=413528

I am yet to receive an acknowledgement from anyone!