Six employees who were fired by the Moffit Cancer center may have been motivated by greed according to a new report from the research center. The report indicated the employees did not disclose their association with Chinese talent programs nor receiving funding from the Chinese government.
Moffit Cancer Center has indicated that 6 of its research members who were fired had links with China talent programs. The research center, which is based in Florida, stated that the researchers might have been motivated by greed. They accused them of hiding ties with Thousand Talents program, a Chinese government-sponsored program.
Moffit Cancer center findings on the fired researchers
The fired researchers were also accused of disregarding institutional and federal rules by not disclosing their ties.
Moffitt officials wrote on 17 January to state Representative Chris Sprowls (R), regarding the matter, wrote,
None of the Moffitt faculty who were Talents program participants properly or timely disclosed their Talents program involvement to Moffitt, and none disclosed the full extent of their Talents program activities prior to Moffitt’s internal investigation, All Moffitt faculty participants in the Talents programs acknowledged receiving personal payments that they did not promptly disclose to Moffitt. They also acknowledged having opened or maintained personal bank accounts in China to receive Talents program compensation.
The employees were fired on 18th December 2019, where Moffit identified its former CEO Alan List, Thomas Sellers, who was the director of its research program and four others who it failed to mention by name.
The connection between the fired employees
A report released by the cancer center showed a connected web of participants who were working closely with China. Its ringleader, immunologist Sheng Wei, joined Moffit Cancer Center in 1992 and was recruited in 2011 by the Thousand Talents program. He started receiving funds in exchange for information pertaining to research being carried out.
Wei would then go on a recruiting spree, enrolling Sellers, Daniel Sullivan, head of Moffitt’s clinical science program, and cancer biologist Pearlie Epling Burnette to the program. He was also in the process of recruiting more researchers to work for him before he was caught, according to the report.
Howard McLeod, a pharmacogenomicist who was the sixth researcher fired, already had links with the Chinese talent program before he was hired in 2013. McLeod enlisted a Chinese scientist, Yijing He, in Moffit when he was appointed. The Chinese scientist was never involved in any research at the research center and the report indicated that he acted as McLeod agent to China.
This report comes amidst heightened scrutiny of foreign researchers in the US. The US government indicated that it was looking for ways to curb illegal information sharing between researchers in the US and foreign governments.
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