August 4, 2023
Poets & Quants recently published an article featuring Andrew King, Associate Professor of Strategy and Innovation, discussing the recent defamation lawsuit against Harvard Business School. In late June, a four-part blog series detailed alleged fraud by Harvard Professor, Francesca Gino, who has defended herself on LinkedIn advising her followers to stay tuned.
In 2021, three authors of blog site Data Colada raised concerns about Gino’s studies. In her lawsuit, Gino alleges Harvard created a new interim research misconduct policy specifically to investigate her case, and the school discriminated against her by treating her differently than men who were also investigated for research misconduct.
“Harvard and other elite schools bear part of the responsibility for situations like this. They demand unreasonable numbers of publications for promotion, and richly reward ‘stars’ that become ‘thought leaders,’ but then are shocked, shocked, when poor oversight, p-hacking, or fabrication is uncovered,” says King.
Many other academics have commented on the situation, some backing Gino and others upset of her alleged actions, with many questions still unanswered.