Imagine that you are a talented young scientist in a hot emerging field at the frontier of medicine, having completed your Ph.D. study just recently. Every major medical school in the country went after you. After a hotly contested bidding war, one university won it with a $450k/year offer that no one can refuse. Or so they thought. You declined the offer, just because you wanted to do something more meaningful. You wanted to devote your talent to curing the poor. You wanted to bring the state of art medical technology to underserved, impoverished people who may have never seen a doctor in their lives. You are going back to China.
You get a hero's welcome in China. You get on the front page of the newspaper. You become a star. Except, this story was not true. The Chinese part was but the American part was totally made up, with the unwitting help of an American professor...
On July 7, 2010, at a conference center near downtown Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in China, a formal ceremony was held for signing employment contracts between high-level scientists that Sichuan was able to recruit from overseas and their local employers. Yes, Chinese do treat their scientists as we treat our NFL stars. Among these star scientists, was one young doctor named Qiwen Mu. Dr. Mu obtained his PhD from Peking University Medical School, then went to the US for postdoctoral training, studying transcranial magnetic stimulation with Prof. Michael S. George at Medical University of South Carolina. Now that Dr. Mu has finished his study abroad, he is returning to China for good. In August, Dr. Mu's story was reported on the front page of the local newspaper. The date of the report was August 30, 2010.
One reader noticed that there was something fishy about the front page story. The story said that Dr. Mu declined an offer of $450k/year as a Chief Scientist in the US, and also gave up a "seaside mansion". The reader wrote a short comment on a blog site " New Thread ", a website dedicated to exposing scientific fraud cases in China, and is widely read by the Chinese scientific community. The comment said that according to the training that Dr. Mu had, his price tag would be more like $50k/year. A few days later, the blog site published a reply from Dr. Mu. In his reply, Dr. Mu accused that reader of being metally sick, and confirmed the claim of $450k/year salary with the following job offer, which he said was signed by Prof. Michael S. George:
January 5, 2011
Dear Dr. Qiwen Mu,
As you know, you are relatively unique in the world in some of your clinical and research training and knowledge. You have worked with Dr. Elliot Stein, who is a world leader in brain imaging and addictions. We were able to recruit you to MUSC where you worked for many years with our groups and learned and developed new techniques with image data analysis and TMS. You are also clinically trained as a neuroradiologist and have passed the required board examinations for licensure.
Based on your unique skills and knowledge, I would like to offer you the following positions - Senior Investigator Faculty
(Professorship), Chief Scientist, Radiologist, and Mentor in Doctoral and Postdoctoral Programs at Brain Stimulation laboratory, Medical University of South Carolina. Your responsibilities would include, but would not be limited to, interleaved TMS-fMRI, perfusion, diffusion, and spectroscopy. You will also be involved in clinical trials as well. The annual salary for this position would be USD 450K.
Thank you for your consideration. If you have any questions, please contact me.
Sincerely,
Mark S. George, MD
Distinguished University Professor of Psychiatry, Radiology and Neuroscience
Director, Brain Stimulation Laboratory
Founding Director, Center for Advanced Imaging Research (CAIR)
MUSC Director, SC Brain Imaging Center of Excellence
Editor-in-Chief, Brain Stimulation: Basic, Translational and Clinical Research in Neuromodulation
This "job offer" touched off a firestorm on Chinese blogosphere. No one believed that Prof. George would actually write such a letter. It is full of Chinglish, very unprofessional, and displays an ignorance of US labor laws and HR practices. Furthermore, salaries of all faculty members of state universities are posted online, and people looked them up. There is not a single person on the faculty of MUSC whose salary is over $400k/year. Poor Prof. George was immediately bombarded by email inquiries about this letter, and he finally responded with the following :
From: Mark George
Subject: Re: Dr. Qiwen Mu
To: "xxxxx"
cc: "nao" , "Qiwen Mu"
Dear Doctors:
I am confused and am not clear what has happened.
Dr. Mu was indeed a scientist working in our lab at MUSC for many years. He left last year to return to China. He told me that he was offered a position to do research in China involving imaging and TMS. He suggested that we try and continue collaborations, which I encouraged.
While at MUSC he was a very good and hard working scientist with numerous publications. He is trained as a research scientist and as a neuroradiologist. After he announced that he was returning to China, we offered him a continued appointment at MUSC, non-paid, in order to continue analyzing data and potentially applying for grants.
In December Dr. Mu returned to Charleston and asked me to re-issue an offer letter. If Dr. Mu were available in the US we would indeed like to have him rejoin our faculty. I informed him that I would not be able to make a formal offer as I am not head of my department (psychiatry) and that it would take higher administrative approval and several months to get a fully binding letter. He asked that I sign the letter below which I read. He stated that he needed it signed and soon in order to apply for collaborative grants. I was confused. When I saw the salary level, I was surprised, as it is over twice my salary and I have been here 20 years. However, Dr. Mu is trained as a neuroradiologist, and their clinical salaries are higher than a psychiatrists. He found the salary number as the national average of neuroradiologists. It is not clear if he could serve as a clinical neuroradiologist without taking the US boards and completing a US fellowship.
I have no information about the number of houses or other issues you raise.
I am a bit astonished to be bothered by this exchange and I hope this email clarifies things.
Sincerely,
Mark
Mark S. George, MD
Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry, Radiology and Neurosciences Medical University of South Carolina
Charleston, SC 29425
843 876 5142 (phone)
843 792 5702 (fax)
Prof. George did not admit that he signed the letter. But he did "read" it. It is interesting though, if Prof. George's recollection is correct, that Dr. Mu asked for the "offer letter" in December, months after the newspaper story about the $450k offer was already published. In other words, at the time of the story, there was no $450k offer, not even a fake one.
There is no doubt that the fake "offer letter" was intended for deception in China, for the purpose of personal gains. What role did Prof. George play in this game of deception? Did he violate any school rules? Are there regulations attached to the federal funding to Medical University of South Carolina regarding how job offers must be made? Have any of these regulations been breached?