Accusations of dishonesty loom over Harvard expert in deceit research

An esteemed authority on ethics and dishonesty, Francesca Gino, is now facing allegations of dishonesty in her own work, prompting her to take administrative leave from Harvard Business School. Gino, a well-known behavioral scientist and author of “Rebel Talent: Why It Pays to Break the Rules at Work and in Life,” published in 2018, has been accused of using fraudulent data in her published papers. This controversy adds to the growing concerns surrounding the replication of findings in the field of behavioral science and psychology research, casting doubts on the credibility of this fashionable branch of social science and management studies.

Gino has been a professor of business administration at HBS since 2014 and has received widespread recognition, including citations in publications like the Financial Times. However, her HBS profile has been updated to indicate that she is currently on administrative leave. Despite numerous attempts by the FT to contact her for comment, Gino has not responded, and Harvard Business School has declined to provide any comment at this time.

A group of academics who curate the DataColada blog, known for examining the evidence behind behavioral science, has begun publishing a series of posts alleging fraud in academic papers co-authored by Gino. In their initial post on June 17, they assert that they have evidence of fraud in four papers and suspect that many more Gino-authored papers contain fake data. This revelation has unsettled behavioral scientists in the United States, with Katy Milkman from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School urging her colleagues to read the DataColada post immediately. Milkman described the controversy as “devastating.” Sa-kiera Hudson from Berkeley’s Haas School of Business expressed skepticism regarding those who take it upon themselves to determine what constitutes real or fake science.

In 2021, a paper co-authored by Gino, behavioral economist Dan Ariely, and others on the topic of dishonesty was retracted from the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences after the DataColada team uncovered evidence of fraud in one of the experiments conducted. In response, Gino expressed gratitude towards the DataColada team for their efforts in improving the research field and emphasized that she starts all her collaborations with trust and assumes the data provided by her co-authors are accurate and collected diligently. Max H. Bazerman, a co-author of the retracted paper from Harvard Business School, regretted not being more vigilant in identifying the fraudulent data and ensuring rigorous research in a collaborative environment. Ariely stated that he never knowingly used unreliable or manipulated data but admitted that he did not adequately verify the data provided for the study.