One incident illustrates just how determined the leaders of the Karolinska Institute were to protect Paolo Macchiarini. In November of 2014, a leaked copy of the whistleblowers’ report came into the hands of the New York Times, which published an article titled “Leading Surgeon Is Accused of Misconduct in Experimental Transplant Operations.” The article detailed several of the most serious allegations against Macchiarini: that he had never obtained ethical permission to conduct his experiments, that his 2011 study in The Lancet had misrepresented the outcome of Beyene’s implant, and that of the three patients at the Karolinska Institute that Macchiarini had given synthetic implants, only Beyene had signed a consent form— and the form was dated two weeks after his surgery. The publicity generated by the article all but forced the Karolinska Institute to act. Anders Hamsten, the vice-chancellor, said he would ask for an external inquiry.

Retaliation against the whistleblowers came quickly. According to Simonson, the whistleblowers were told that they had violated patient privacy and would be fired immediately. That didn’t happen, but in December the Karolinska Institute informed the whistleblowers that the head of the cardiothoracic clinic would deliver a formal warning, the last step before an employee is terminated.

The Karolinska Institute also reported the whistleblowers to the police. “I was called down to the police and put in a room with no windows, with a tape recorder and a lawyer and a policeman in front of me, and interrogated. That was pretty scary,” Matthias Corbascio, a cardiothoracic surgeons says. “It was exactly what it’s like on television. And you know, it’s hard to be a tough guy in that room.”

The accusations were baseless; the whistleblowers had anonymized all the identities in their report, and Corbascio had applied in advance for ethical permission to access patient records. “I wrote that ethics application because I knew that they were going to try to fire us,” he says.

In the spring of 2015, the external inquiry Hamsten had promised was completed. Dr. Bengt Gerdin, an emeritus professor at Uppsala University Hospital, concluded that Macchiarini was guilty of scientific misconduct. The inquiry didn’t address any potential abuses of human subjects, but the result of the inquiry was clear. Macchiarini had falsified his research.

But even an external corroboration of misconduct didn’t deter the Karolinska Institute leaders. It took months for them to respond, and when they finally came to a conclusion, they called a press conference. “We asked if we could attend the press conference, and they said no,” Simonson says. “They then called our boss at the time and said that they were hiring guards to stop us from attending.”

Accompanied by members of the Nobel Committee, Hamsten disavowed Gerdin’s external inquiry and proclaimed his confidence in Macchiarini. The whistleblowers were stunned.

Macchiarini responded with gratitude. “To have been falsely accused of such serious misconduct is every researcher’s nightmare,” he said. The Lancet applauded the decision with an editorial titled “Paolo Macchiarini Is Not Guilty of Scientific Misconduct.”

Grinnemo remembers this entire period as a very dark time. The stress was overwhelming. “I mean, I couldn’t sleep. I was always thinking of this next strategic move,” he says. People he considered friends stopped returning his calls and emails. He could not concentrate on his research. He found it hard to give his children the attention they needed. “It was also hard doing surgery, to be standing there focusing on the operation,” he says.

The thought that he might have sacrificed his career for a futile cause sent him into a panic. Corbascio felt the same way. The hostility at work was palpable. He says, “I think that Kalle and I were like the two most hated people at Karolinska, and I’ve no doubt about that.”