The story is even worse than what is publicly reported. The test was actually not developed by this professor but by one of his postdocs. She happened to be Chinese and her contract was up for renewal, when he saw the potential for commercialization, he did not renew her contract. She only had a work visa and therefore was forced to go back to china. There was more shady stuff and nepotism going on, but I don't remember. This guy 100% deserves everything that is coming for him.
Thanks for the addition! That’s a big problem in academia.
That's terrible specificity, but with a very high sensitivity the test may still have value as a "rule-out" type test. That is, you do this and if it's positive, you do a mammogram. Mammograms are generally very uncomfortable and read by specialized (more expensive) radiologists, so even preventing 1 mammogram for every 2 women getting the test has some value. Similar thing works with people getting Tb tests, or HIV tests. You have a cheap rule out high sensitivity test with low specificity, and follow the positives up with the more expensive sensitive and specific "gold standard" test. I don't see the misconduct based on this article alone.