Of course, they didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter.
Francesca Gino is one of Harvard Business School’s best known professors. The behavioral scientist authored “Rebel Talent,” a 2018 book with the subtitle “Why It Pays to Break the Rules at Work and in Life.” Well, the expert on lying, cheating and dishonesty lied and cheated. She took administrative leave from the “B-School” after evidence surfaced that she had falsified her data…on cheating. Ironic, no? And stupid.
Gino, whose work has been widely cited, has been a professor of business administration at Harvard since 2014. She was first accused of fabricating data by the blog Data Colada in July of 2021 when the bloggers approached Harvard Business School with their allegations. The Dean negotiated a secret agreement with Data Colada to delay posting about their allegations until the Business School thoroughly investigated their claims.
An 18-month-long investigation by a three-person committee of former and current professors eventually concluded that the professor had indeed engaged in research misconduct. Gino insists that she is innocent and is suing for $25 million: she might as well, since an ethics professor and author of books about cheating caught cheating doesn’t exactly have a promising future. Of course, the ethical thing for an ethics expert to do in such a dilemma is to confess and apologize. But if she were an ethical ethics expert, she wouldn’t be in this mess.
In an article called “A Weird Research-Misconduct Scandal About Dishonesty Just Got Weirder,” the Chronicle of Higher Education reported that Harvard’s inquiry had found that one of Gino’s studies contained even more fraudulent data than had been alleged. Then Data Colada weighed in with a four-part series examining data in four separate studies co-authored by Gino. The blog authors wrote, “We believe that many more Gino-authored papers contain fake data. Perhaps dozens.”
This week, Harvard University stripped Professor Gino of her tenure at Harvard Business School. Her dismissal seems imminent.
Harvard might have tried to finesse the Gino affair were it not already shaken by the recent Claudine Gay scandal, when the university’s first black president had to resign because of scholarship plagiarism shortly after being appointed. In addition, the school is already on shaky ground in the terrain of public opinion, claiming financial distress as a defense against the Trump Administration’s assault despite Harvard having an endowment some nations would love to have as their their nest egg.
Professor Gino definitely picked the wrong time to embarrass Old Ivy.
Ethics Alarms 
So. Modern day academics are not only Commies, they’re amoral, petty intellectual criminals and frauds? Nice. Let’s hear it for the academy.
Where’s our man in tenure land, Curmie? What’s his take on rampant research fraud?
Curmie, alas, is apparently mad at me, or you, or EA, for not following the general hysteria of the Trump Deranged following our POTUS’s election. I mentioned this in the comment thread to the post about the cancelled high school performance recently.
Sorry, I’m diving off-topic a bit…
I went back and read the comment train to Curmie’s final (at least for the moment) response. It is sad – at least partially. This site – like most all things in life – does not thrive with “hive-minded group-think” or even the more moderate “like-minded consensus.” Instead it enlightens best and educates best when there is respectful, reasoned, and rigorous discussion…and disagreement.
So while it’s partially sad that Curmie – and so many others of a more liberal bent – may have abandoned this cul-de-sac, it’s also very frustrating. If this place now looks to them like a unrepentant, unassailable redoubt of hive-minded conservatives, my question to them is: who made it that way…me, who was here when you were and is still here?…or all of you, who left (some quietly, some in a huff, and some in spectacular fashion)?
In the arena of ideas, competition hones the edge as iron sharpens iron. But if one side refuses to participate, it surrenders the field without even a whimper, much less a fight. And to a degree, everyone loses.
I doubt Curmie believes his/her side of the ideological spectrum is bad…it would be tossed aside if that was the case. But it would be a tragedy if he/she has decided to only discuss matters where everyone plays on the same team. It’s like playing Doom in god-mode: safe, but only enjoyable for about ten minutes.