That's a great story! I found a book describing the story of Douglas Prasher in more detail: https://books.google.com/books?id=L2zDBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA18&lpg=P...

This is also told on his wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Prasher

On the bright side, it seems he returned to Scientific Research: In June 2010, Prasher was finally able to return to science, working for Streamline Automation in Huntsville until December 2011, and then from 2012 to 2015 in Tsien's lab at the University of California in San Diego