KIE: A detailed account is presented of the John Darsee scientific fraud case at Harvard Medical School, which culminated in the harshest penalty the federal government has ever imposed on a researcher for falsifying data. The National Institutes of Health also took the unprecedented step of extending its findings and sanctions beyond the individual researcher to the scientists in charge of the laboratory where he worked. The Darsee case has occasioned widespread examination of the competitiveness of the research environment.