Harvard Revokes Tenure of Embattled Dishonesty Researcher

Harvard University has revoked the tenure of Francesca Gino, a dishonesty researcher in the business school who was accused of fabricating data, GBH News reported.

Sources told the public broadcasting company that administrators shared news of Gino’s ouster at a closed-door meeting with business school faculty last week, noting that the university had severed all ties with her.

The move follows an internal investigation into allegations raised two years ago by the blog Data Colada that Gino had co-authored four academic papers that revealed “evidence of fraud.” Investigators determined that Gino had “engaged in multiple instances of research misconduct” in those papers, manipulating data to support her hypotheses, The Wall Street Journal reported. They recommended that the university investigate her other work for irregularities and place her on administrative leave, which it did in June 2023. Officials also launched a formal tenure review.

Gino, a professor of business administration, denied the allegations and filed a $25 million defamation lawsuit against the Data Colada team, Harvard and the Harvard Business School dean.

Last September, a district court judge dismissed the defamation charges on the grounds that Gino was a public figure, making any criticism of her protected by the First Amendment.

Only the Harvard Corporation, the university’s top governing board, has the authority to revoke tenure—a move it does not make often. In fact, Gino is the first faculty member to be stripped of tenure in decades, according to GBH News.