This January, The Freakonomics Podcast did a special two-part series on fraud in academia. An astonishing 10,000 research papers were retracted last year. The series discusses the Gino scandal below, the brave academics who discovered her fraud and broke the story.
Pretty fascinating stuff. The publish or perish model has produced a system that can pressure folks "to make stuff up".
If you want to check the episodes out, click the links below!
Harvard Probe Finds Honesty Researcher Engaged in Scientific Misconduct
A newly released document details the university’s investigation into behavioral scientist Francesca Gino, once a star faculty member
By Nidhi Subbaraman, WSJ
March 14, 2024
Harvard Business School professors examined the accusations about the researcher’s work.
A Harvard University probe into prominent researcher Francesca Gino found that her work contained manipulated data and recommended that she be fired, according to a voluminous court filing that offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at research misconduct investigations.
It is a key document at the center of a continuing legal fight involving Gino, a behavioral scientist who in August sued the university and a trio of data bloggers for $25 million.
The case has captivated researchers and the public alike as Gino, known for her research into the reasons people lie and cheat, has defended herself against allegations that her work contains falsified data.
The investigative report had remained secret until this week, when the judge in the case granted Harvard’s request to file the document, with some personal details redacted, as an exhibit.
The investigative committee that produced the nearly 1,300-page document included three Harvard Business School professors tapped by HBS dean Srikant Datar to examine accusations about Gino’s work.
They concluded after a monthslong probe conducted in 2022 and 2023 that Gino “engaged in multiple instances of research misconduct” in the four papers they examined. They recommended that the university audit Gino’s other experimental work, request retractions of three of the papers (the fourth had already been retracted at the time they reviewed it), and place Gino on unpaid leave while taking steps to terminate her employment.
“The Investigation Committee believes that the severity of the research misconduct that Professor Gino has committed calls for appropriately severe institutional action,” the report states.
HBS declined to comment.
The investigative report offers a rare look at the ins and outs of a research misconduct investigation, a process whose documents and conclusions are often kept secret.
Dorothy Bishop, a psychologist at the University of Oxford whose work has drawn attention to research problems in psychology, praised the disclosure. “Along with many other scientists, I have been concerned that institutions are generally very weak at handling investigations of misconduct and they tend to brush things under the carpet,” Bishop said. “It is refreshing to see such full and open reporting in this case.”
Harvard started looking into Gino’s work in October 2021 after a group of behavioral scientists who write about statistical methods on their blog Data Colada complained to the university. They had analyzed four papers co-written by Gino and said data in them appeared falsified.
An initial inquiry conducted by two HBS faculty included an examination of the data sets from Gino’s computers and records, and her written responses to the allegations. The faculty members concluded that a full investigation was warranted, and Datar agreed.
In the course of the full investigation, the two faculty who ran the initial inquiry plus a third HBS faculty member interviewed Gino and witnesses who worked with her or co-wrote the papers. They gathered documents including data files, correspondence and various drafts of the submitted manuscripts. And they commissioned an outside firm to conduct a forensic analysis of the data files.
The committee concluded that in the various studies, Gino edited observations in ways that made the results fit hypotheses.
When asked by the committee about work culture at the lab, several witnesses said they didn’t feel pressured to obtain results. “I never had any indication that she was pressuring people to get results. And she never pressured me to get results,” one witness said.
According to the documents, Gino suggested that most of the problems highlighted in her work could have been the result of honest error, made by herself or research assistants who frequently worked on the data. The investigative committee rejected that explanation because Gino didn’t give evidence that explained “major anomalies and discrepancies.”
Gino also argued that other people might have tampered with her data, possibly with “malicious intent,” but the investigative committee also rejected that possibility. “Although we acknowledge that the theory of a malicious actor might be remotely possible, we do not find it plausible,” the group wrote.
Harvard placed Gino on administrative leave in June 2023, after the university completed its probe. A few days later, the Data Colada bloggers published their criticisms of the four papers Gino co-wrote in a series of posts that stunned the psychology and behavioral sciences community.
She sued the university in August, arguing that the investigation was flawed and biased.
After the investigation, the journals pulled the remaining papers the investigative committee had recommended be retracted—bringing the total to four retractions.
In court filings and public statements, Gino and her attorney have denied wrongdoing.
“The silver lining is that people can see for themselves that this investigation was a charade,” Andrew Miltenberg, Gino’s attorney, said in an emailed statement. “Harvard found no evidence that Prof. Gino modified data, not a single co-author or research assistant interviewed believed she did it, and their own forensics firm did not claim they proved Prof. Gino’s guilt.”
“I do take integrity seriously,” Gino wrote in a submission to the committee dated Nov. 11, 2022, included in the report. “I have not manipulated nor fabricated data, and I’ve not written papers that intend to mislead readers with the way studies are described.”
The lawsuit has generated a surge of support for the bloggers, with other researchers launching a GoFundMe to support their legal fees. That fund is approaching $400,000.
Harvard and Data Colada will make arguments to dismiss Gino’s claims at a hearing scheduled for April 26.
The Data Colada scientists—Joe Simmons, Leif Nelson and Uri Simonsohn—declined to comment.
Melissa Korn contributed to this article.
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