John Darsee obtained his
undergraduate education at the
University of Notre Dame, then went to medical school at
Indiana University, where he received a degree in 1974. Darsee had an excellent reputation as a student and medical researcher. He worked at
Emory University from 1974 to 1979, serving as
chief medical resident at
Grady Memorial Hospital. The head of his lab,
cardiologist Eugene Braunwald, considered Darsee the most remarkable of the 130 fellows who had worked in his lab and offered Darsee a
faculty position at Harvard in 1981. Some of Darsee's colleagues became concerned about the accuracy of Darsee's results. They went to the lab director, Robert Kloner, with their suspicions. Kloner investigated and found that Darsee had been altering dates on his laboratory work to make a few hours' work appear to be several weeks of data. However, in October 1981 discrepancies between Darsee's data and those collected by other centers performing similar work triggered a formal investigation by the NIH. Darsee was barred by the NIH from receiving federal
research funding for 10 years.
Brigham and Women's Hospital, affiliated with Harvard, had to return $122,371 in research funds to NIH. This was the first time an institution was required to return money to NIH because of research fraud. ==Wider misconduct==