I'm Huge in Tehran

As an ivory-tower head-in-the-clouds academic-type person, one of the nicest complements that you can receive is having another researcher ask for more information about your work. There are moments (or months) when you really wonder if what you're doing is having an impact on science, if anyone is really reading your publications, or if you're just toiling away for $10 an hour on a bunch of crap that is totally inconsequential to everything and everyone else on the planet. So having other people ask you more about your research, and (even better) having other people ask if you could help them incorporate what you've done into their work, really makes you feel good.

Unless they're a bunch of Iranians. Yup, the only people that are interested in my old work from Round 1 in grad school are a group of sketchy characters from the "Tehran Technical University." I keep getting emails from these guys, asking if I can send them the computer code that I wrote to remove noise from our medical images. The emails usually go something like this (no exaggeration):

"Dear mr desmond, my name are Mohammed Istanfazur, student for masters degree science in Tehran Technical University. Your works are the technically and joyous for take out the noise. We would like to also do this thing, for look at the babies or the eye retina. I have tried tried, and have a progress, but have a problem with a step. Please, could you send original code? We keep the confidential and not distribute it. I would be grateful and if you could send, help us a lot. Please send. Yours, Mohammed."

I've gotten three almost identical requests from this school for the same code in the last few months...it's pretty funny, because (a) their grammar is awesome (b) Iran isn't exactly known for its cutting-edge optical coherence tomography research (c) their email addresses are always gmail or hotmail acccounts (d) the "Tehran Technical University" website is 75% broken links and window dressing (e) they're all named Mohammed!

The other funny thing (well kinda) is that the imaging that our lab does is similar to synthetic aperture radar, which is used for satellite reconassaince and military air-search radars. Soooo...if a bunch of guys from Iran ask me to send them an advanced computer algorithm that could be used for enhancing military imagery, what is the correct response? Well I might disagree with a lot of the policies of the current US government, but hey I don't want to get deported!

"Dear Mr. Istanfazur, thank you for your email. I am glad that you've found my work useful. Unfortunately I cannot distribute computer code since this is the policy of our lab. Perhaps you could work together with the other two people from your institution who have also recently contacted me. Together I'm sure you could overcome your difficulties. Good luck. Des"

And if that doesn't work I've always found it useful to blame the American imperialist military-industrial complex, burn a few flags, and declare jihad on the computer. Computer bugs are known to surrender when faced with jihad.