Francesca Gino, a renowned professor at Harvard Business School who was once praised for her research on honesty and unethical behavior, has had her academic title revoked after being found to have manipulated data in multiple scientific studies. This is the first time since the 1940s that Harvard University has made this decision, the school confirmed.
According to The Wall Street Journal , Gino was accused of manipulating data in at least four academic papers she co-authored. Three of those papers have since been retracted from scientific journals. The studies primarily involved cheating, guilt, and moral motivation—topics on which Gino was once considered a leading expert.
In June 2023, after an 18-month internal investigation, Harvard concluded that Gino had committed “research misconduct” and suspended her without pay, revoking all of her academic positions. Nearly two years after the allegations surfaced, in May 2025, the school officially revoked her professorship—an extremely rare move at prestigious universities.
From Ethicist to Defendant in $25 Million Lawsuit
Ms. Francesca Gino started working at Harvard Business School in 2010 and was appointed full professor in 2014. She served as Head of the Department of Negotiation, Organizations and Markets from 2018 to 2021. Her name is associated with research on why people lie and the role of emotions such as guilt in regulating ethical behavior. Her research has been widely cited in The New York Times , The Wall Street Journal , Harvard Business Review , NPR and many other prestigious media channels.
However, her career began to falter in 2021, when three behavioral researchers — Leif Nelson, Uri Simonsohn, and Joe Simmons — who run the blog Data Colada , published questions about the validity of data in several papers that Gino co-authored. They said they found “traces of manual intervention in the original data,” which could have altered the results in a more favorable light for the research.
After Harvard received the Data Colada report, the school began an investigation and kept the findings confidential until June 2023. Gino then filed a $25 million lawsuit against Harvard and the research group, alleging that the school violated internal policy by using a “tailor-made” disciplinary process against her. In the lawsuit, Gino denied any wrongdoing and called the allegations “baseless.”
Harvard remains silent, academics shocked
According to CNBC News, a Harvard spokesperson confirmed the revocation of the title but declined to provide further information, citing personnel privacy concerns. Meanwhile, The Harvard Crimson - Harvard University's student newspaper - said that since the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) established rules on tenure termination in the 1940s, no professor has ever had his or her title revoked at the school.
A federal court dismissed the defamation portion of Gino’s lawsuit in September 2023, arguing that Data Colada’s analysis was protected by the First Amendment (free speech). However, the lawsuit alleging breach of contract by Harvard remains under review.
Ms. Gino currently maintains a personal website that updates the progress of the lawsuit, in which she asserts: "I have never committed academic fraud. When presented in court, with the support of experts (although Harvard has denied me access), the truth will be revealed."
The incident is shocking not only because Gino is one of the most prominent figures in the field of ethics and behavior research, but also because the situation raises big questions about the ability to monitor and verify data in social science — a field that is increasingly having a wide-ranging impact on policy,education , and business.
Academics say the case will set an important precedent for how universities handle academic misconduct, and will spur demands for transparency, independent verification and research ethics in the global scientific community.
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