Room temperature ferromagnetism in Fe-doped TiO$_{2}$ films is unrelated to magnetic ordering of iron.

TiO$_{2-\delta }$ films doped with x = 1 -- 5 at.{\%} $^{57}$Fe produced in oxidizing or reducing conditions by pulsed laser deposition on sapphire substrates exhibit ferromagnetic behaviour at room temperature. Conversion electron M\"{o}ssbauer spectra show that most of the iron in the oxidized film (10$^{2}$ Pa) is present as paramagnetic Fe$^{3+}$ or Fe$^{2+ }$whereas in the reduced films (10$^{-3}$ Pa) most of the iron is present as well-crystallized iron metal. The moment per iron atom for 1{\%} and 5{\%} films significantly exceeds the value of 2.2 $\mu _{B}$ for iron metal and in the 1{\%} oxidized film it is as much as 6.9 $\mu _{B}$ per iron atom. Films where the dopant ions are not magnetically ordered possess some of the largest ferromagnetic moments. Saturation moments are in the range 2-20.10$^{-8}$ Am$^{2}$ or 90-900 $\mu _{B}$ nm$^{-2}$ of substrate area. The iron in these oxidized films is in Fe$^{3+}$ or Fe$^{2+}$ state, but it is \textit{not magnetically ordered} and cannot therefore contribute to the observed ferromagnetic moments. The isomer shifts indicate octahedral oxygen co-ordination for both ions. We conclude that Fe-doped TiO$_{2}$ cannot be regarded as dilute magnetic semiconductor. The magnetism of this, and may be that of many other dilute magnetic oxides might be explained in terms of oxygen-based electronic defects, or orbital currents which do not involve the dopant directly.