Harvard University fired a professor after finding that she fabricated research used in studies on dishonesty.
Francesca Gino, a star business professor at the Ivy League, was stripped of her title this past week after Harvard administrators informed business faculty of their decision, GHB reported.
An investigation into her work was launched in 2023 after a trio of data bloggers – Uri Simonsohn, Leif Nelson and Joe Simmons – presented what they said was evidence of academic fraud in four studies co-authored by Gino, noting that they also ‘believe that many more Gino-authored papers contain fake data.’
Gino was a rising professional at Harvard and her behavioral research studies relating to cheating, lying and dishonesty received widespread media coverage over the past decade.
But questions about her work first emerged regarding a 2012 study she co-authored, which purported to show that making people sign an honesty pledge at the beginning of a form, rather than the end, increases honest responses.
That study was retracted in 2021 over apparent data fabrication by a different researcher who worked on the project, which cited three separate lab experiments to draw its conclusion.
About four years later, an internal investigation found that Gino manipulated data to support her findings in at least four of her studies.
The prestigious university said it hadn’t stripped a professor of their tenure in decades and did not comment further on the announcement, per The Daily Beast.
Liar = FIRED1