Harvard, that bastion of integrity, just fired Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino, who, according to The Harvard Crimson, “has been fighting data fraud allegations for nearly four years.”
It marked a historic faculty penalty for Harvard, which has not revoked a professor’s tenure since the 1940s, when academic protection rules were institutionalized.
The Crimson notes: “Gino, a behavioral scientist who became famous for studying honesty and ethical behavior, was accused of manipulating observations to better support her conclusions. Before her work came under scrutiny, she was a prominent researcher in her field and the fifth-highest paid employee at Harvard in 2018 and 2019, receiving more than $1 million in compensation each year.”
Seriously, you can’t make this up!
The Crimson continues: “In 2022, HBS launched an 18-month investigation, which ultimately determined that Gino had committed academic misconduct. HBS Dean Srikant M. Datar placed Gino on unpaid administrative leave, barred her from campus, and revoked her named professorship in June 2023. The same month, Data Colada accused Gino of committing data fraud in three additional research papers she co-authored. In July 2023, the University also initiated a formal review of Gino’s tenure at Datar’s request. A month later, Gino filed her $25 million lawsuit, alleging that the University, HBS Dean Srikant M. Datar, and the Data Colada bloggers — Uri Simonsohn, Leif D. Nelson, and Joseph P. Simmons — had conspired to defame her.”
Gino’s legal challenges to the accusations have had mixed results, and she has now amended her suit against Harvard to include Title VII and various discrimination claims.
She has also endeavored to win over public opinion, penning an open letter in October 2023 claiming her innocence: “I am writing you today to break my silence. Making the decision to sue my own institution was devastating. But I was left with no alternative, as I will share more about here. I am innocent. And in the spirit of Veritas, I need to right this wrong. It has been shattering to watch my career being decimated and my reputation completely destroyed. It has been hard to see how this situation impacted those around me — my family, my mentors, my collaborators and my students. The record needs to be corrected.”
Apparently, Harvard believes the institution has corrected the record by revoking Gino’s tenure.
As our friend Ken Blackwell summed it up: “The star Ivy League professor — who had authored over 140 scholarly papers and snagged numerous awards — had come under scrutiny in 2023 when a trio of behavioral scientists published a series of blog posts on Data Colada with evidence accusing four of her papers published between 2012 and 2020 she had co-authored contained ‘fraudulent data.’”
According to a review of Gino’s work by the research review site Data Colada: “In 2021, we and a team of anonymous researchers examined a number of studies co-authored by Gino, because we had concerns that they contained fraudulent data. We discovered evidence of fraud in papers spanning over a decade, including papers published quite recently (in 2020).”
So, this was the first Harvard revocation of tenure in more than 80 years, and it comes right in the crossfire of Donald Trump’s aggressive and long-overdue legal battles with Harvard over its failure to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitic attacks. Trump is taking on Harvard on several fronts.
Time for more tenure revocations, and while you’re at it, freeze those foreign student visas!
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776
