What Harvard Business School’s Investigation Report On Francesca Gino Failed To Reveal

When witnesses appeared before the investigation committee convened by Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar to probe allegations of academic fraud against Professor Francesca Gino, they were read a boilerplate statement by the school’s research integrity officer.

“HBS has an obligation to keep this matter confidential,” Alain Bonacossa would say, according to transcripts of those interviews. “So even the fact that this interview occurred or that there’s an ongoing investigation into allegations of research misconduct is confidential.”

The release on March 14 of the investigation committee’s report, a move urged on a federal court by Harvard’s lawyers, not only is a violation of the university’s own human resource policies. It is a breach of trust and an infringement of a person’s right to privacy.  It is also jarringly hypocritical because Dean Srikant Datar’s new research misconduct policy threatened Gino with termination if she violated confidentiality during the investigation.

‘MANY OF US FIND IT SHOCKING HOW PROFESSOR GINO HAS BEEN TREATED BY THE SCHOOL’

It is just another example of the mismanagement of this controversy by HBS Dean Srikant Datar who has consistently shown poor judgment in assessing the risks of this case to Harvard Business School’s overall reputation and, no less importantly, to the school’s culture of collaboration, fairness and human decency.

Seven tenured professors at Harvard Business School, remaining anonymous out of fear of retaliation by Dean Datar,  say his handling of the Gino case has rocked their confidence in the school’s leadership (see Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar Comes Under Attack From Seven Tenured Profs). 

“So many of us find it shocking how Professor Gino has been treated by the school,” a long-time HBS professor tells Poets&Quants. In any case, the controversy has led to an environment at HBS where professors whose employment is protected by tenure are scared to speak openly about their concerns.

Unsealing a confidential report further erodes the trust Harvard Business School faculty should have in its leader. Making the report public, moreover, does nothing to help the university’s legal strategy in defeating Gino’s lawsuit. The report already was part of the court record and would be considered by U.S. District Judge Myong J. Joun in making any decisions on the case. 

THE RELEASE OF THE REPORT WAS A PUBLIC RELATION STUNT TO SWAY PUBLIC OPINION

Instead, Harvard’s decision to ask the court to unseal the document was a public relations stunt to sway more people into thinking that Gino was guilty of academic fraud. The practical effect of its release is to further defame a professor who has brought a legal action against Harvard for that very reason: defamation.

As the dean’s office surely knows, Gino cannot publicly defend herself before evidence is discussed at trial or she risks losing privilege. So why would Datar push for the document’s release and why push for it now, knowing that the report is a contested document and that Gino cannot respond before trial?

There is no question that the unsealing of the report is highly damaging to Gino’s already tattered reputation and career. It details numerous discrepancies in the data underlying four published papers from 2012 to 2020. Those discrepancies, moreover, support each article’s hypothesis. Whether those disparities are the result of honest errors or deliberate manipulation of the data by Gino, her colleagues or research assistants is less certain. 

IT IS HARVARD’S RESPONSIBILITY TO PROVE THAT GINO PERSONALLY CONDUCTED RESEARCH MISCONDUCT

For one thing, Gino was not the sole author of any of these papers. There are eight other academics whose bylines sit atop these publications. Many of them, including Maryam Kouchaki of Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and Scott S. Wiltermuth, of USC’s Marshall School of Business, were interviewed by the investigation committee. The names of these witnesses, although redacted, are easily identified given their detailed backgrounds disclosed in the transcripts.

For another,  Harvard’s policy dictates that it is Harvard’s responsibility to prove that Gino personally conducted research misconduct and prove it was reckless, knowing, or intentional. The report makes clear that Harvard required Gino to prove that she did not commit research misconduct, which was difficult if not impossible for her to do given the restrictions placed on her by Harvard during the investigation:

She was not allowed, for example, to ask the witnesses, including her own co-authors and research assistants, any questions during the investigation committee interviews. Gino was unable to obtain necessary documents, such as sign-in or activity logs for her Qualtrics account where data was stored, her emails from when she was a professor at the University of North Carolina, or the final and approved submissions for a 2012 paper. 

WHAT IS UNSAID IN THE INVESTIGATION COMMITTEE’S REPORT IS MORE COMPELLING AND TELLING

While the investigation committee was able to call in its own forensic consultant, Gino did not have the assistance of her consultant to investigate and effectively respond to the claims but was instead led to believe that the role of the forensic experts hired by Harvard to investigate would be impartial and diligently support both parties throughout the investigation – rather than (as they did) operate solely as an extension of Harvard.

What is unsaid in the investigation report is, in fact, more compelling and far more telling than what is in it. Here’s what you won’t learn by reading the voluminous report:

• Dean Datar secretly pushed through a new research misconduct policy at the school without the collaboration, knowledge, or approval of the faculty. Shockingly, the faculty was unaware the policy was changed until two years later after Gino filed her lawsuit against the university, Dean Datar, and the authors of the blog Data Colada whose allegations launched Harvard’s internal investigation.

• Under that new policy, three of the four published papers and four of the five allegations in which Gino is accused of research misconduct were published outside of the six-year limitations period. Investigating old papers outside of this imitations period matters because it created the very problem the limitations period was designed to prevent: available records and witness recollections could not reliably answer the specific questions about the research process and protocols or who made which changes to specific documents, why and when. This decision is even more problematic because some faculty say the dean has declined to investigate papers outside of the window for other faculty. “If that is true, why make an exception for Professor Gino?”, asks an HBS professor.

• Not only did Harvard fail to adhere to its own policy, but the school then ensnared Gino in an impossible predicament. She was penalized for her inability to provide comprehensive answers to inquiries regarding research conducted over a decade ago — the very problem Harvard’s policy was meant to address.

•  Only after the investigation was Gino able to speak with data forensics experts. Since then, forensic work has directly disproven some of the critical assumptions on which the report is based. The report essentially treated data cleaning as data fabrication. In one paper, for example, subjects were asked to sum several of their prior entries. As part of data cleaning, a formula calculating the actual sum replaced the erroneous entry when arithmetic errors were made by the subjects. The report notes the difference in values and concludes fabrication. In another paper, subjects who failed to follow directions were deleted from the data set. The report notes the discrepancy in rows and concludes fabrication.

NOT ALL DATA DISCREPANCIES  ARE THE RESULT OF FRAUD OR MISCONDUCT

In truth, anyone who has dealt with large volumes of data knows that anomalies almost always crop up. These normal causes of data discrepancies can result from incomplete survey responses that would routinely be removed from data sets. Bottom line: There could be data discrepancies between the original file and the published file but not for reasons of misconduct. The report does not explain the extent to which the investigators explored these sorts of reasonable explanations.

As an HBS professor explains to Poets&Quants: “I don’t understand how it can be acceptable for the school to receive a complaint, rewrite a research misconduct policy in a way that is worse for faculty, and use that rewritten policy as the governing policy. In a legal context, it is illegal to retroactively apply laws that worsen the plight of individuals.”

Adds the faculty member, “It feels at the very least immoral to do so under such serious circumstances. And it is certainly counter-normative for HBS, a school that prides itself on process integrity, to exclude faculty input, deliberation, and an advisory vote for something that involves potentially taking away tenure. Many of us are wondering why the dean would break from a long-standing tradition of faculty involvement and process.”

‘I HAVE ALWAYS FOUND FRANCESCA TO BE OF THE HIGHEST INTEGRITY’

On the morning of June 24th, 2022, Columbia Business School Professor Adam D. Galinsky appeared before the investigation committee. H had long known Gino as a professional colleague and was one of two co-authors on a 2015 paper entitled The Moral Virtue of Authenticity: How Inauthenticity Produces Feelings of Immorality and Impurity, one of the four articles under investigation.

In an aloha shirt after returning from a vacation in Hawaii, Galinsky vouched for Gino’s integrity. His testimony also was promised confidentiality by Harvard Business School and he was forbidden to to communicate with Gino by HBS. The unsealing of the report makes his remarks public and his comments contain an unreported bombshell. 

“I have never seen at any point Francesca put pressure on anyone to get results or to move forward,” Galinsky told the panel of investigators. “I’ve only found her to be enthusiastic about research and excited about the ideas. I’ve never had any suspicion whatsoever that any study that I’ve been involved with her would have any lack of integrity. I have always found Francesca to be of the highest integrity in my interactions with her.”

Later during the session, Galinsky wanted to underscore his remarks. “I wanted to say one other thing for the record which is I have had suspicions about the integrity of other projects I’ve been involved in and have removed my name from projects before or gently guided a project to sort of wither and die. The worst thing I could experience is lack of integrity in a data project. I had no reason ever to do that with Francesca.”

‘THAT’S ABOVE OUR PAY GRADE’

At the end of the 37-minute interview, Galinsky had an important question to ask HBS Professor Teresa Amabile who chaired the committee.

“At what point am I allowed to go back to communicating with my colleague and friend? And can I communicate with her outside of this? I’ll just say it’s unfair to me to completely handcuff me and restrict me from having communication.” 

“That’s a question that we, the committee,  can’t answer. That’s above our pay grade,” responded Amabile.

DON’T MISS: HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL’S DAMNING UNSEALED REPORT ON FRANCESCA GINO or THE RISE AND FALL OF A HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL SUPERSTAR