Fraud in a Harvard Lab

By Claudia Wallis

"Gifted" researcher is punished for faking data

"Dr. Darsee is clearly one of the most remarkable young men in American medicine. It is not extravagant to say that he became a legendary figure during his year as chief resident in medicine at Grady Memorial Hospital."

With that exuberant commendation, Cardiologist Paul Walter of Emory University endorsed the selection of his former colleague John Darsee for one of the biggest plums in academic medicine: an appointment to the Harvard Medical School faculty. Darsee's career to that point had been a nonstop flight from modest origins in Huntington, W. Va., to professional glory at age 31 as a research fellow at Harvard. Arriving in 1979, he performed brilliantly, producing five papers in 15 months, all published in major journals. In 1981 Dr. Eugene Braunwald, an eminent cardiologist at the university, began action to place Darsee on the faculty.

Yet by the time all the letters of recommendation were in, the offer had been withdrawn and Darsee's spectacular career was unraveling. The young man, who is still called "brilliant and creative" by former colleagues, had been caught faking research data.

Last week the National Institutes of Health released the results of a yearlong investigation into Darsee's misconduct; it announced that he would be barred from receiving federal grant funds and contracts for ten years, the harshest penalty for fraud it has ever imposed. The NIH report not only documented Darsee's abuses at Harvard, but also raised serious doubts about the veracity of research he had carried out earlier at Emory.

The NIH also sharply criticized Darsee's supervisors at the Harvard-affiliated Cardiac Research Laboratory at Brigham and Women's Hospital for failing to report promptly their initial suspicions about Darsee's work. The young researcher was assigned to a project funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and aimed at developing animal models for assessing the effectiveness of drugs used to treat heart attacks. Charged NIH Associate Director William Raub: "A large and costly study of great importance for a major public health problem was irrevocably compromised." Harvard was asked last week to return the $122,371 it had received to fund the study.

Suspicions about Darsee's work first arose in May 1981, when he was pursuing another project. Tipped off by two other researchers, Laboratory Director Robert Kloner found that Darsee had been faking dates on reports to make a few hours' work look like two weeks' worth of data. Kloner informed Braunwald, who terminated Darsee's fellowship and notified Medical School Dean Daniel Tosteson. But Braunwald accepted Darsee's plea that this was his sole offense. Unwilling to destroy the career of what he called "an apparently brilliant researcher," Braunwald did not inform NIH officials. Instead, he and Kloner conducted their own audit of Darsee's work and supervised him closely during the next few months. They uncovered no evidence of further misconduct.

According to the Government's report, they did not look hard enough. In October, when the results from all five centers involved in the N.H.L.B.I, study were released, it was clear that the Harvard data were inconsistent with the rest. Only then did Braunwald and Kloner inform NIH officials about the incident in May. Investigations into Darsee's work were formally initiated by both Dean Tosteson and the NIH. Meanwhile, Braunwald and Kloner redoubled their efforts to unmask the fraud. Said Braunwald last week: "We began to think like Sherlock Holmes."

The medical detectives found a number of abuses. Darsee had recorded data from tests on dogs that required the injection of radioactive substances and the excision of the animals' hearts. Yet Braunwald and Kloner discovered from tissue samples that the animals had never been injected, and at least one of the dogs had been buried with its heart intact. The NIH found that all measurements made by Darsee were so perfectly consistent and neat that they "lack credibility."

While NIH officials recognized that "no system of procedures and controls can offer absolute protection against willful deceit," they criticized Kloner and Braunwald for not paying close enough attention to researchers under their supervision. Though Braunwald strongly denied the charge, the report maintained that "a hurried pace and emphasis on productivity, coupled with limited interaction with senior scientists, have contributed to the disappointing events."

In recent years there has been a growing number of such "disappointing events" in laboratories around the country. Yale, Cornell and Boston University have each had to contend with embarrassing cases of scientific fraud. According to a number of scientists, the tremendous pressures to "publish or perish" may be a factor in the trend. These pressures have been exacerbated by the intense competition for limited federal research funds. "Science is more expensive these days," says Albert H. Hastorf, Stanford's provost. "You need a big grant or you are out of business." Many leading research institutions have attempted to deal with the problem by tightening up procedures for handling cases of suspected fakery.

As for Darsee, he maintains that he has "no recollection" of committing the abuses. Last week, however, he issued a statement "asking forgiveness for whatever I have done wrong" and asserting, "I want to continue to contribute to the medical system." He is currently in the first year of a two-year fellowship in critical-care medicine at Ellis Hospital in Schenectady, N. Y. He does no research. According to Hospital Spokeswoman Pat Mattice, Darsee had been "completely honest" in describing his past, and "we feel he has a lot to offer." --By Claudia Wallis. Reported by Renie Schapiro/Washington and Sue Wymelenberg/Boston

With reporting by Renie Schapiro/Washington, Sue Wymelenberg/Boston This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.