Francesca Gino has filed a $25-million defamation lawsuit against the scholars who have accused her of fabricating research data, as well as against Harvard Business School, where she is a professor.
In a 100-page lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in Massachusetts, Gino denied ever falsifying data. She accused Data Colada — a blog written by a trio of business-school professors who have been digging into her studies — of making false and defamatory statements about her work, amounting to a “vicious, defamatory smear campaign.” Gino also accused Harvard of failing in its investigation to produce substantial evidence that she had committed research misconduct, and said the sanctions it handed down were “unwarranted and excessive.”
In her lawsuit, Gino said that she had been placed on a two-year administrative leave on June 13, which bars her from campus and strips her of her salary, teaching duties, research responsibilities, student mentorships, and titled professorship. She also alleged that the allegations have “sullied if not destroyed” her career, and has delayed a book deal.
“I want to be very clear: I have never, ever falsified data or engaged in research misconduct of any kind,” Gino said in a statement on LinkedIn. “Today I had no choice but to file a lawsuit against Harvard University and members of the Data Colada group, who worked together to destroy my career and reputation despite admitting they have no evidence proving their allegations.”
She added, “While claiming to stand for process excellence, they reached outrageous conclusions based entirely on inference, assumption, and implausible leaps of logic. They created and perpetuated a false narrative about my ethics and integrity, which has had a devastating impact on my friends, colleagues, collaborators and, most of all, my family. I stayed quiet to focus my effort on meaningfully defending myself and my career.”
As The Chronicle first reported on June 16, Gino went on administrative leave at Harvard following an investigation that the university had been conducting into her research. Starting the next day, Data Colada rocked the behavioral-sciences community with a series of blog posts about what they called “evidence of fraud” in four of her studies, adding that they believed that these were not isolated incidents. The problems identified by them, and by subsequently published retraction notices, include anomalously sorted data; participant data apparently being swapped between test groups; data that was seemingly altered; and instances of original data sets failing to match published data sets.
Two of those papers have been retracted and a third retraction is forthcoming. A fourth paper was already retracted in 2021 due to a separate instance of data fabrication, and Harvard is seeking to update that retraction notice, as The Chronicle has reported.
A Harvard spokesperson declined to comment. Leif Nelson, a UC Berkeley professor and one of the Data Colada authors — along with Uri Simonsohn of Esade Business School and Joe Simmons of the University of Pennsylvania — declined to comment, saying that as of Wednesday afternoon, they had not had time to read the newly filed lawsuit.
Gino, an expert in dishonesty and other topics related to leadership and workplace behavior, said in her lawsuit that she first learned of the allegations against her research on Oct. 27, 2021, from Harvard Business School’s research integrity officer, and that Harvard was investigating on April 15, 2022.
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