The disgraced ex-Harvard professor—fired from her cushy job for fabricating data in research centered on dishonesty—was once one of the highest-paid staff members at the Ivy League institution. Francesca Gino was paid a staggering $1 million annually as a behavioral scientist at Harvard Business School, according to the student-run Harvard Crimson.
She was ranked as the university's fifth-highest-paid employee between 2018 and 2019. However, her career at the Ivy League institution came to an abrupt halt last week after school officials stripped her of tenure and fired her after an investigation concluded that she had manipulated data in four studies to make the findings boosted her proposed hypothesis.
Lost the Top Job
Once a celebrity academic, Gino became the first Harvard professor since the 1940s to have their tenure revoked, following the introduction of formal dismissal guidelines by the American Association of University Professors.
Gino — the author of more than 140 academic papers and recipient of several prestigious awards — first came under investigation in 2023. Three behavioral scientists behind the blog Data Colada published a series of posts presenting evidence that four papers she co-authored between 2012 and 2020 included "fraudulent data."
Scrutiny over her work began with a 2012 study she co-authored, which claimed that asking people to sign an honesty pledge at the beginning of a form, rather than at the end, led to more truthful answers.
That particular study was retracted in 2021 due to apparent data manipulation by another researcher involved in the project, which was based on three separate lab experiments.
Several years later, an internal review concluded that Gino had fabricated data to support her findings in at least four of her published studies.
According to The Daily Beast, Harvard had not stripped a professor of their tenure in decades and offered no further comment on the matter.
When the investigation began in 2023, Gino responded on her personal website, firmly rejecting the accusations made against her.
"There is one thing I know for sure: I did not commit academic fraud. I did not manipulate data to produce a particular result," it reads.
"I did not falsify data to bolster any result. I did not commit the offense I am accused of. Period."
After allegation started to spread, Gino was placed on administrative leave. The journal Psychological Science also withdrew two of her published articles, saying that the decision was based on recommendations from the Research Integrity Office at Harvard Business School (HBS).
In both instances, the journal noted that an independent forensic firm hired by HBS had found "discrepancies" between the final published data and earlier versions from Gino's behavioral research.
Image Completely Tarnished
Separately, Harvard requested the withdrawal of a third study published by Gino in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and according to the Financial Times, the journal's publisher planned to pull the article in its September 2023 edition.
The two papers recently withdrawn by Psychological Science included a 2015 study titled "The Moral Virtue of Authenticity: How Inauthenticity Produces Feelings of Immorality and Impurity" and a 2014 study called "Evil Genius? How Dishonesty Can Lead to Greater Creativity."
The 2020 paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, which is now set to be retracted, was titled "Why Connect? Moral Consequences of Networking with a Promotion or Prevention Focus."
The study "Evil Genius" included five separate lab experiments involving human participants, who were given chances to act dishonestly by exaggerating their performance on certain tasks, followed by assessments of their creativity.
According to the original abstract, the research claimed that "acting dishonestly leads to greater creativity in subsequent tasks."
In August 2023, Gino fired back at the university and filed a $25 million lawsuit, alleging she was the victim of a "smear campaign." The 100-page complaint, filed in federal court in Massachusetts, accused Harvard and the three data analysts of defaming her by spreading false accusations of academic misconduct.
"I want to be very clear: I have never, ever falsified data or engaged in research misconduct of any kind," Gino said.
In her lawsuit, Gino argued that any irregularities in the spreadsheets could have been caused by research assistants manually transferring data from paper forms—a method that is inherently susceptible to human mistakes.
Gino's lawsuit further claimed that Harvard conducted an unjust and biased investigation into the data fraud accusations. She alleged that the university "overlooked evidence that could have cleared her" and introduced a new policy for handling academic misconduct cases that was enforced solely in her situation.
