CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (Diya TV) — Harvard University has stripped tenure and fired Francesca Gino, a well-known Harvard Business School (HBS) professor who allegedly fabricated data in several behavioral science studies on dishonesty.
The action is a historical and unusual step — no Harvard professor, to its knowledge, has had their tenure revoked since at least the 1940s when rules governing academic safeguards were formalized, The Harvard Crimson said.
Gino, who became famous through her work on ethical conduct and wrote over 140 academic articles, was charged with faking data in a minimum of four published articles from 2012 to 2020. Her research first found itself under the spotlight back in August 2021, when the academic watchdog blog Data Colada accused a co-authored paper of data fraud. That paper was officially withdrawn the next month.
In 2022, HBS initiated an 18-month internal probe which involved reviewing Gino’s research, email, and early manuscripts, and hired a forensics company to review her data. The investigation found that Gino had participated in academic misconduct, as stated in a university report, which was referenced by The Harvard Crimson. HBS Dean Srikant Datar put Gino on unpaid administrative leave in June 2023, stripped her of her named professorship, and suggested a formal tenure review.
In an earlier move this month, Harvard’s highest governing body, the Harvard Corporation, finally voted to strip Gino of her tenure and terminate her job, GBH News originally reported.
The university has refused to discuss the details of the disciplinary measure, citing personnel policies, but confirmed that Gino was indeed terminated last week.
Gino, a former one of Harvard’s highest-paid professors, making over $1 million in 2018 and 2019, has denied everything. She attributed the discrepancies in the data to research assistant mistakes or sabotage by an individual with “malicious intent.” But investigators dismissed those possibilities.
“Something I am certain of is that I did not engage in academic dishonesty,” Gino wrote on her website in March 2024. “When I get the chance to demonstrate this in the court of law, aided by experts to whom I was not given access in Harvard’s investigatory process, you will realize how flimsy their case is and that these are false charges.”
Gino sued Harvard, Dean Datar, and the three Data Colada bloggers — behavioral scientists Leif Nelson, Uri Simonsohn, and Joseph Simmons — in July 2023 for $25 million for defamation, reputational damage, and breach of contract. She has also charged that Harvard implemented and enforced a new research misconduct policy in August 2021, retrospectively applied and without approval from the faculty.
A federal judge rejected Gino’s defamation claims in September 2024, holding she was a public figure and that criticism of her work was First Amendment protected. The judge permitted part of her lawsuit to proceed, specifically the breach of contract claim regarding tenure protections.
Gino has persisted in protesting in public statements and via her website, asserting that she has been unfairly singled out. “It has been shattering to watch my career being decimated and my reputation destroyed,” she stated in October 2023.
Even with the legal fight, Harvard progressed with its disciplinary action, informing faculty of Gino’s firing in a closed-door meeting last week, GBH News has reported.
The Gino case fallout has led to wider discussions in the academic arena concerning research integrity, institutional due process, and the changing standards for faculty accountability at elite institutions.
