Latest news with #datafraud
Fox News
28-05-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Harvard revokes professor's tenure in rare move amid data manipulation allegations
Print Close By Pilar Arias Published May 28, 2025 Harvard University has revoked the tenure of Francesca Gino, a professor of business administration, who was accused of data fraud. Gino has been fighting the allegations for almost four years, The Harvard Crimson reports. The student newspaper says Gino was well-known for studying honesty and ethical behavior before she was accused of manipulating observations to support her hypotheses. "This is the first time it has occurred in recent decades," a Harvard spokesperson told Fox News Digital via email regarding the tenure being revoked. Prior to losing academic protection, Gino fought for two years to keep her position at the Ivy League school. In 2018 and 2019, she was the fifth-highest paid employee at the prestigious school, receiving more than $1 million in compensation each year, The Harvard Crimson reported. HARVARD PRESIDENT URGES THE SCHOOL TO ADDRESS LACK OF CONSERVATIVES ON CAMPUS Gino had authored over 140 scholarly papers and won numerous awards prior to coming under scrutiny by scholars who questioned her data in a series of blog posts published on Data Colada. "In 2021, we and a team of anonymous researchers examined a number of studies co-authored by Gino, because we had concerns that they contained fraudulent data," the blog reads. "We discovered evidence of fraud in papers spanning over a decade, including papers published quite recently (in 2020)." HOW FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY PLANS TO END SCHOOL YEAR FOLLOWING DEADLY SHOOTING The blog's authors shared their concerns with Harvard Business School in the fall of 2021. Gino, who filed a lawsuit against the blog authors and Harvard, according to The Hill, with parts of the lawsuit still ongoing. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP She last publicly declared her innocence on her website. "I did not commit academic fraud. 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," she wrote. Fox News Digital made attempts to reach Gino for comment, but did not immediately hear back. Print Close URL
The Guardian
27-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Harvard professor put on leave after claims she falsified ethics research data
A Harvard professor known for researching honesty before being accused of extensive data fraud has been fired, the first time the Ivy League institution has dismissed a tenured instructor in about 80 years. Francesca Gino was put on administrative leave by the Harvard Business School (HBS) in 2023 after multiple allegations of falsifying data related to her research, which focused on ethical behavior. On Tuesday, a university spokesperson confirmed that Gino's tenure had been revoked. Academic tenure generally prevents university faculty members from being fired except in extreme circumstances. The Harvard Crimson student newspaper reported that no instructors at the school had lost their tenure since the 1940s, when the American Association of University Professors implemented rules governing firings. Attempts to contact Gino for comment were not immediately successful, but she has previously maintained her innocence. Harvard did not elaborate, citing a policy against discussing personnel matters. Gino's dismissal is unrelated to the attacks and funding cuts that Donald Trump has inflicted on the university since taking office in January. She first arrived at HBS, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2010 as an associate business administration professor, according to her résumé, which also said she became a full professor in 2014 and headed the Negotiations, Organizations and Markets Unit from 2018 to 2021. Gino also presented her research at a number of conferences and spoke at various schools, and her work had been covered in media including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and NBC News. In June 2023, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported that Harvard had informed another HBS professor, Max Bazerman, that it believed one of the studies overseen by Gino – with whom he had published a 2012 paper – had falsified results. The paper in question involved findings published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which later retracted the work. The experiment asked participants to fill out tax and insurance paperwork, and found that those who were asked to sign declarations of truthfulness at the top of the page were more honest than those asked to sign declarations at the bottom of the page. Bazerman said the university had supplied him with a 14-page document showing 'compelling evidence' of data falsification, including the discovery that someone had accessed a database to add to the file and alter it. He denied having 'anything to do with the fabrication,' according to the Chronicle. A day later, the DataColada blog – run by three behavioral science academics – published accusations that detailed what it said were extensive evidence of alleged fraud in four academic papers co-authored by Gino. They said none of her co-authors were involved, to the best of their knowledge, and that they shared their concerns about Gino with the HBS in the fall of 2021. An internal investigation by Harvard subsequently found Gino had committed 'research misconduct'. It stripped her titled professorship and removed her from all teaching and research duties. After she filed a $25m lawsuit against Harvard and DataColada, a federal judge dismissed her claims that she had been defamed but allowed her to argue that Harvard had breached its contract by imposing discipline that violated its own tenure policies, the Crimson reported. Gino has always denied fraud, and wrote on her website: '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.'
