Harvard Professor Who Studied Honesty Loses Tenure Amid Accusations of Falsifying Data

New York Times

27-05-2025

A Harvard professor who has written extensively about honesty was stripped of her tenure this month, a university spokesman said on Tuesday, after allegations that she had falsified data.
The scholar, Francesca Gino, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and a prominent behavioral scientist, has studied how small changes can influence behavior and been published in a number of peer-reviewed journals. Among the studies in which Dr. Gino has been a co-author are, for example, one showing that counting to 10 before deciding what to eat can lead to choosing healthier food.
In 2021 and 2023, Dr. Gino was accused by other professors on a blog site of falsifying data in academic papers. Harvard told Dr. Gino that it had received allegations that she manipulated data in four papers. She has broadly denied the claims.
Many of Dr. Gino's papers were influential in the field. Her résumé lists dozens of articles, books and papers for which she was an author or co-author. But further studies in recent years have cast doubt on some of her findings.
Dr. Gino did not immediately respond to a request for comment. As of Tuesday morning, her Harvard webpage remained up and she was listed as being on administrative leave. She is no longer included in Harvard Business School's faculty directory.
In a 2012 paper, Dr. Gino showed that people who were paid a small amount of money to solve puzzles were more likely to be honest about how many they had solved if a question about the accuracy of their reports was put at the top of the document instead of the bottom. But in a 2023 blog post at a site about statistical methods called Data Colada, three professors showed that some of the data in the study had been changed in a way that made the result more robust.
Dr. Gino was also a co-author in a similar study in which insurance customers who reported the mileage on their cars were more honest if the question was at the top of the form. In a blog post in 2021, the same authors had found that much of the data came from someone connected to the study, not from the customers.
In 2023, Harvard Business School put Dr. Gino on unpaid administrative leave, and banned her from campus, she said on her webpage. 'I absolutely did not commit academic fraud,' she said.
Last year, she added, 'Once I have the opportunity to prove this in the court of law, with the support of experts I was denied through Harvard's investigation process, you'll see why their case is so weak and that these are bogus allegations. Until then, this is all I can share.'
Dr. Gino has filed a lawsuit against Harvard and the bloggers. Last year, defamation claims in that suit were thrown out when a judge ruled that she was a public figure. Other parts of the lawsuit are ongoing.
Dr. Gino previously taught at the University of North Carolina and Carnegie Mellon. She earned her undergraduate degree and Ph.D in Italy. She joined Harvard in 2010.
Stripping a professor of tenure is rare, and there are no known instances in recent decades at Harvard. The Harvard Crimson reported that no professor had lost their tenure since the rules were formalized in the 1940s.
Harvard was shaken in 2023 by accusations in conservative news media outlets of plagiarism by its president, Claudine Gay. She stepped down as president the next year amid those allegations and criticism of her response to antisemitism on campus.
Harvard is also embroiled in a high-stakes dispute with the Trump administration, which is looking to cancel all federal government contracts with the university and block it from enrolling international students.