Harvard Revokes Tenure From Francesca Gino, Business School Professor Accused of Data Fraud

Harvard revoked tenure from Francesca Gino, the Harvard Business School professor who has been fighting data fraud allegations for nearly four years, and ended her employment at the University last week, a Harvard spokesperson confirmed.

The move concluded Gino’s two-year battle to keep her position at the school — and marked a historic penalty for a faculty member at Harvard, where no professor is known to have lost their tenure since at least the 1940s, when rules for the academic protection were formalized.

Gino, a behavioral scientist who became famous for studying honesty and ethical behavior, was accused of manipulating observations to better support her conclusions. Before her work came under scrutiny, she was a prominent researcher in her field and the fifth-highest paid employee at Harvard in 2018 and 2019, receiving more than $1 million in compensation each year.

The Harvard Corporation made the final decision to revoke Gino’s tenure earlier this month, according to the public radio station GBH, which first reported the move.

A spokesperson and lawyers for Gino did not respond to requests for comment.

Her work first came under public scrutiny in August 2021, when the investigation blog Data Colada alleged that data in a paper she co-authored was fraudulent. The paper was retracted in September 2021.

In 2022, HBS launched an 18-month investigation, which ultimately determined that Gino had committed academic misconduct. HBS Dean Srikant M. Datar placed Gino on unpaid administrative leave, barred her from campus, and revoked her named professorship in June 2023. The same month, Data Colada accused Gino of committing data fraud in three additional research papers she co-authored.

In July 2023, the University also initiated a formal review of Gino’s tenure at Datar’s request. A month later, Gino filed her $25 million lawsuit, alleging that the University, HBS Dean Srikant M. Datar, and the Data Colada bloggers — Uri Simonsohn, Leif D. Nelson, and Joseph P. Simmons — had conspired to defame her.

The suit challenged a new policy established by HBS in August 2021 after allegations of data fraud were first brought against Gino. The policy — which was neither vetted by nor announced to HBS faculty, a departure from the school’s usual practice — expanded the definition of research misconduct. And it established that those who broke the policy could “be subject to sanctions up to and including termination.”

In her lawsuit, Gino alleged that the new rules were created solely for her.

Gino’s ongoing legal challenges have had mixed success in court. U.S. District Court Judge Myong J. Joun dismissed Gino’s defamation claims in September 2024, but he allowed another key part of Gino’s lawsuit to move forward: the allegation that Harvard breached Gino’s contract by allegedly subjecting her to unfair disciplinary actions in violation of the University’s tenure policies.

A month later, in October 2024, Gino filed a motion to amend her suit to include Title VII and discrimination claims.

Gino has also taken her battle to the court of public opinion. In September 2023, Gino penned a letter to HBS faculty claiming she was innocent and had “to right this wrong.” She also published a personal website, where she accused HBS of misconduct and conspiring with Data Colada to damage her reputation.

“It has been shattering to watch my career being decimated and my reputation completely destroyed,” Gino wrote on her website in October 2023.

Correction: May 27, 2025

A previous version of this story referred to the Boston-area public radio station that first reported Gino’s tenure revocation by its traditional call letters, WGBH. In fact, the station rebranded to GBH in 2020.

—Staff writer Graham W. Lee can be reached at graham.lee@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @grahamwonlee.

—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.

—Staff writer Veronica H. Paulus can be reached at veronica.paulus@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @VeronicaHPaulus.