Francesca Gino’s Best Case Against The Harvard Business School

For the past four years, Harvard Business School Professor Francesca Gino has maintained her innocence of charges of research misconduct. And during those years, the once-superstar prof has unsuccessfully fought back while losing her job, her title, her tenure, and her reputation.

Now, in a new filing in her lawsuit against her former employer, Gino finally lays out her complete case against Harvard College, its business school, and HBS Dean Srikant Datar. The 91-page amended complaint filed on July 22 with the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts recounts every step of an ordeal Gino has lived since being accused of committing fraud in four published research studies in July of 2021. Harvard will soon respond to the filing but has consistently declined public comment on the case. After Gino originally filed her lawsuit, Dean Datar wrote an email to the faculty defending his decision to discipline Gino.  ”The sanctions reflect a shared belief that the misconduct represented a significant violation of academic integrity and that the evidence not only met but surpassed the applicable preponderance of evidence standard,” he wrote.

For those who have followed this story from its beginning, many of the details will already be known. But the filing also contains new revelations and highly plausible justifications for the anomalies that were singled out by the academic bloggers at Data Colada who first brought the allegations of fraud to the attention of the Harvard Business School. Many of her fellow academics have made their own assumptions about her guilt, of course. Whether this filing would convince them of her innocence is unknown, but the new brief is Gino’s best effort to change what has largely become the accepted narrative of her guilt (to see the most complete explanations for how the data discrepancies occurred, go to the bottom of this article).

GINO ARGUES THAT HARVARD FOUND HER GUILTY ON ‘MERE SPECULATION’

Her basic defense? Harvard found her guilty based on what she calls “mere speculation,” relying on some data discrepancies that were inconclusive at best in proving research fraud. Those discrepancies occurred as a result of simple error, in one case hitting the wrong keys on an Excel file, or because Harvard’s investigation of them was so incompetent that it misinterpreted what it called fraud. “Without any supporting witness statements, email correspondence, or other evidence, such as the original “raw” data (that is, data submitted by study participants before being handled or “cleaned” by anyone), the investigation committee concluded that Gino was responsible for misconduct,” according to Gino’s lawyers.

Moreover, Gino also correctly argues that not a single witness interviewed by the business school’s investigation committee reported “any type of behavior or attitude that is consistent with the speculative intent that was posed by the investigation committee—intent that was unspecified and unsupported by any evidence whatsoever.” Yet a gag order placed on her during the proceedings along with tight deadlines for her to mount a proper defense made it nearly impossible, says Gino, to defend herself. Harvard prevented her from communicating with the research assistants, lab managers, and programmers who had helped her develop the data for those studies. The school also prohibited Gino from hiring her own forensic expert to do a deep data dive on her behalf.

To make matters worse, three of the four papers used to find Gino guilty of research misconduct fell outside the school’s own requirement that allegations of misconduct must be raised within six years of the alleged misconduct. Yet, those three articles are now 13, 11 and 10 years old. The committee got around this policy standard by claiming that Gino had “cited” the work within the last six years.

‘WE HAVE TO MAKE AN EXAMPLE OF THIS WOMAN’

“This interpretation of the rule is plainly wrong,” writes Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig in an exhibit to the filing. “If the simple citation of work is enough to waive the benefit of the rule, the rule has no benefit. Every academic lists every work they’ve published on their website or in published bibliographies. Under HBS’s interpretation, none would gain the benefit of any limitation. The exception would swallow the rule.”

In an exhibit to the filing, Gary Pisano, a former senior associate dean for faculty promotion and tenure, who was asked to serve at Gino’s advisor throughout the investigation, strongly supports Gino. Pisano, who has been on the HBS faculty since 1988, says he was told not to speak to Gino about the allegations for more than three months. He ultimately found the investigation committee’s report to be “unpersuasive. In my opinion, the evidence overwhelmingly did not support any finding of research misconduct. I also think the Final Report disregarded relevant evidence. For example, the Investigation Committee ignored the statements of people who worked with Professor Gino and said they never saw anything in her behavior suggesting that she would commit research misconduct. Additionally, Professor Gino posted her data online, publicly, before it was standard practice or required practice to do so. To believe that she committed research misconduct, one would have to believe that she intentionally manipulated her data, posted it publicly, but left the incriminating original data on her computer. This is implausible.”

Gino’s filing opens with a dramatic flourish. “’We have to make an example of this woman.’ Those are the words of Claudine Gay in late 2023—then President of Harvard University—succinctly describing Harvard’s intention to destroy Plaintiff’s career,” write Gino’s lawyers in their brief. “While President Gay would step down shortly thereafter, in the wake of allegations that she herself had engaged in research misconduct, President Gay is just one of many Harvard leaders who have carried the baton in its race to sacrifice Plaintiff to protect Harvard’s own image.”

The quote from Gay is attributed to an unnamed HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL professor.

GINO CALLS HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL DEAN DATAR A LIAR

Whether she prevails in this lawsuit alleging both discrimination and breach of contract is yet to be seen. But her own allegations against Harvard will no doubt further erode the school’s reputation and status. Gino holds back no punches. Her lawyers call Dean Datar an outright liar, claiming that he provided false testimony to the university committee that ultiatemly stripped her of tenure. According to Gino, Datar falsely claimed that he had not made a deal with Data Colada to withhold publication of the allegations until Harvard conducted its own investigation after which Data Colada could use the outcome as public validation for its claims.

On June 13th of 2023, Gino was finally summoned to Dean Datar’s office for a 5:30 p.m. meeting.  Datar told Gino that she would not have the opportunity to say anything, and that he simply wanted the process to be “humane” so had decided to meet with herin person to deliver the news of his decision. He then, according to Gino, proceeded to read, word for word, his decision letter. She was being placed on unpaid administrative leave “for a period of two years,” during which she would be banned from campus, and that she would receive no salary or benefits after July 31 of 2023. Datar immediately revoked her named professorship and told her that he was requesting that Harvard begin proceedings to revoke her tenure.

“Within hours of delivering this news to Plaintiff, Dean Datar’s office contacted one of Plaintiff’s colleagues and asked her to ‘counsel out’ Plaintiff, meaning to persuade Plaintiff to resign. This female colleague was told that, if Plaintiff agreed to leave Harvard, ‘this will all go away; we won’t say anything to anyone.’ But that too was a lie. Harvard knew that Data Colada still planned to publicly disclose its salacious allegations against Plaintiff and that, when it did so, Data Colada would be disclosing information concerning Harvard’s purported investigation—which Harvard had agreed to provide in accordance with their deal. Of course, none of that had been disclosed to Plaintiff, as Harvard had intentionally kept secret Data Colada’s role in the investigation, referring to it only as an ‘anonymous’ complainant.”

DIRTY LAUNDRY HUNG OUT ON BOTH HARVARD AND HBS

Gino hangs out the dirty laundry at Harvard and HBS for all to see. Among other things, she notes that there is not a single instance of a male faculty member at HBS being “counseled out” for an alleged violation of the “collegiality” standard. In contrast to its treatment of female faculty, she alleges, Harvard allowed male faculty at HBS and other schools to remain in their positions and to retain their salary and benefits, even after finding them responsible for egregious misconduct, including severe sexual harassment against female junior professors and students.

“Defendants have not fired similarly-situated tenured male faculty, or subjected them to unpaid administrative leave, based on alleged research misconduct,” according to her lawsuit. She names Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ treatment of tenured psychology professor Marc Hauser who, she says, was found responsible for research misconduct until he chose to resign, without a constructive discharge or the institution of tenure revocation proceedings.

“When publicized complaints of plagiarism were made against two male Harvard Law School Professors, Laurence Tribe and Charles Ogletree, although the allegations were apparently undisputed, both remained employees at Harvard and neither was subjected to a procedurally onerous investigation or sanctions like Plaintiff. And, when a federal court found economics professor Andrei Shleifer liable for conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government while leading a Harvard economic reform program in Russia, Harvard not only refused to fire Shleifer, but it also went so far as to pay $26.5 million to settle a government lawsuit against him.Schleifer currently holds a position as an HBS Visiting Professor.”

DEAN DATAR COMES FROM AN HBS DEPARTMENT ‘PARTICULARLY UNWELCOME’ TO WOMEN FACULTY

There’s more, according to Gino. “Even when Harvard has felt compelled to place male tenured professors on administrative leave amidst highly publicized allegations of sexual misconduct, Harvard has routinely placed such male professors on paid administrative leave, and permitted these male professors to return to their teaching and administrative roles, see, e.g., John Comaroff (following two years of administrative leave for sexual harassment and retaliation, returned to classroom); and Jorge Dominguez (after being “barred from administrative responsibilities for three years” for sexual harassment, permitted to hold high-level positions at Harvard), or else permitted such male faculty to quietly retire with salary, reputation, and benefits intact, see, e.g., the case of Gary Horton (sexual misconduct).”

Gino also notes that before Datar became dean of HBS in January of 2021, he had been a tenured professor at HBS and had taught in the school’s Accounting & Management Unit since the mid-1990s, a unit she claims has been “particularly unwelcome unit” for female professors. “On information and belief, in 2019, there had not been a single tenured woman in the Accounting & Management Unit for more than 20 years.

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