A Harvard University professor has been fired by the elite school after she was caught fabricating research for her study on “dishonesty.”
Francesca Gino was a star business professor at the Ivy League college.
However, Gino was stripped of her title in disgrace this past week after Harvard administrators informed business faculty of their decision, GHB reported.
An investigation into her work was launched in 2023, as Slay News reported at the time.
The scandal emerged after a trio of data bloggers – Uri Simonsohn, Leif Nelson, and Joe Simmons – presented what they said was evidence of academic fraud in four studies co-authored by Gino.
They noted that they also “believe that many more Gino-authored papers contain fake data.”
Gino was a rising professional at Harvard.
Her behavioral research studies relating to cheating, lying, and dishonesty received widespread media coverage over the past decade.
However, questions about her work first emerged regarding a 2012 study she co-authored.
The study purported to show that making people sign an honesty pledge at the beginning of a form, rather than the end, increases honest responses.
That study was retracted in 2021 over apparent data fabrication by a different researcher who worked on the project.
The study cited three separate lab experiments to draw its conclusion.
Roughly four years later, an internal investigation found that Gino manipulated data to support her findings in at least four of her studies.
The prestigious university said it hadn’t stripped a professor of their tenure in decades, per The Daily Beast.
Harvard did not comment further on the announcement
When the investigation first took shape in 2023, Gino took to her personal website to deny the claims against her.
“There is one thing I know for sure: I did not commit academic fraud,” her statement reads.
“I did not manipulate data to produce a particular result.
“I did not falsify data to bolster any result.
“I did not commit the offense I am accused of. Period.”
After accusations started to spread, Gino was placed on administrative leave.
The journal Psychological Science also retracted two articles by Gino.
In a statement, the journal said it had acted on the recommendation of the Research Integrity Office at Harvard Business School (HBS).
In both cases, the journal said an independent forensic firm engaged by HBS had discovered “discrepancies” between the published data sets and earlier data sets from Gino’s behavioral experiments.
Separately, Harvard requested that the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology withdraw a third study by Gino.
The journal’s publishers also plan to retract the article published in the September 2023 issue, the Financial Times reported.
The two studies recently retracted by Psychological Science were a 2015 paper titled “The Moral Virtue of Authenticity: How Inauthenticity Produces Feelings of Immorality and Impurity” and a 2014 paper titled “Evil Genius? How Dishonesty Can Lead to Greater Creativity.”
The 2020 article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, which is slated for retraction, was titled “Why Connect? Moral Consequences of Networking with a Promotion or Prevention Focus.”
The paper titled “Evil Genius” involved five separate lab experiments with human volunteers.
The participants were given the opportunity to behave dishonestly by overreporting their performance on various tasks, and then measured on creative tasks.
The article purported to demonstrate that “acting dishonestly leads to greater creativity in subsequent tasks,” according to the original abstract.
In August 2023, Gino fired back at the school and went on to file a $25 million lawsuit alleging she was the target of a “smear campaign.”
The 100-page legal filing, submitted to the Massachusetts federal court, claimed Harvard and the three data scientist bloggers defamed her with false claims of academic fraud.
“I want to be very clear: I have never, ever falsified data or engaged in research misconduct of any kind,” Gino said.
In her suit, Gino insisted that any anomalies in the spreadsheets may have simply been the result of research assistants entering data manually from paper worksheets, a process naturally prone to human error.
Gino’s suit went on to accuse Harvard of using an unfair and biased process to investigate the data fraud allegations, saying the university “ignored exculpatory evidence” and created a new policy for researching academic fraud claims that applied only to her.
The suit also accused the school of defamation, breach of contract, bad faith, and gender discrimination.
The filing claims that Gino’s male colleagues who faced similar accusations were treated completely differently.
“Harvard’s complete and utter disregard for evidence, due process, and confidentiality should frighten all academic researchers,” Gino’s attorney, Andrew T. Miltenberg, previously said in a statement.
“The University’s lack of integrity in its review process stripped Prof. Gino of her rights, career, and reputation – and failed miserably with respect to gender equity,” he added.
Once a superstar in the world of behavioral research, Gino had been lavished with awards and press coverage for her buzzy research, and was among Harvard’s most highly paid faculty members, raking in an annual salary of more than $1 million.
She was featured in a TED Talk in April 2021, titled: “The Power of Why: Unlocking a Curious Mind.”
Since accusations around her came to light, people started to attack her in the comment section of the YouTube video.
“Why truly is an excellent question,” one wrote.
“Like ‘Why did you fake that data?’ and ‘Why do you think it was ok to lie to so many people?”
“Thanks for this video with a dishonesty expert, who can contribute invaluable practical experience to the subject matter of dishonesty,” said another.
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