The departures are one of the first publicly revealed outcomes of dozens of similar investigations nationwide, as federal officials have increasingly warned of foreign exploitation of U.S.-backed research — particularly from the Chinese.
The National Institutes of Health raised concerns last fall about the three scientists at the hospital, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, which confirmed Sunday that it had decided to fire them. Two of the scientists, who have not been identified, resigned instead; the third is in the process of being fired.
In redacted investigative reports, the center referred to ties to China or Chinese residents or institutions in all three cases. The reports say that the researchers failed to disclose international collaborators and that at least one confidential grant application was sent to a scientist in China in violation of federal policy, among other allegations.
It is not clear from the investigative reports whether the researchers were necessarily being directed by Beijing.
“A small but significant number of individuals are working with government sponsorship to exfiltrate intellectual property that has been created with the support of U.S. taxpayers, private donors and industry collaborators,” Peter Pisters, the center’s president, said in a statement Sunday.
The investigations began after Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, sent a letter in August to more than 10,000 institutions the agency funds, warning of “threats to the integrity of U.S. biomedical research.”
Federal officials said they found that some researchers had shared with Beijing intellectual property and pilfered confidential information from grant applications. Other researchers had failed to disclose that they were receiving money from foreign sources while being funded by the NIH.
Federal officials have said that some scientists have run “shadow laboratories” in China while conducting NIH-funded research in the United States. This month, the NIH said 55 institutions across the country are investigating such concerns.
While the public focus has been on biomedical research funded by the National Institutes of Health, similar concerns have emerged for research funded by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy, McKinney said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.