In defense of Francesca Gino

An argument to be made here, in words and a podcast

In July 2021, researchers with a blog called Data Colada contacted the Harvard Business School to raise data integrity questions about four papers by Harvard Business School Professor Francesca Gino. Three months later, the business school notified her that she was being investigated for academic fraud.

From that time until now, Francesca has been effectively forbidden from discussing her case publicly to offer any effective defense to the charges made against her. At first, she was forbidden by the business school from discussing the charges with anyone except two advisors she was permitted to select. When the business school determined she had committed academic fraud, and recommended that her tenure be revoked, that began a university process that likewise mandated confidentiality until the process was complete.

I have known Francesca since her time as a fellow at the Edmund J. Safra Center for Ethics. When the charges against her were made public, I began working with her in a pro bono capacity, helping her to secure counsel, litigation support, and eventually litigation funding. I was heavily involved in the final appeal to the President after the hearing committee recommended that her tenure be revoked. I was not involved in the defense during the tenure revocation process directly.

Francesca is innocent of the charges made against her. The purpose of this Substack will be to host the materials that would convince you of that. More importantly for other members of the Harvard faculty, it will evince the extraordinary injustice of the process that led to her removal as a member of the HBS faculty.

I will present this story through a podcast, with supporting documents, evidence, and transcripts of the podcast episodes themselves. I will interview people along the way as needed to help unpack the facts. I will invite Data Colada to join the conversation, as their initial intervention clearly and rightly noted that although they were confident they had identified data anomalies, they could not identify the source of those anomalies. I will invite them to revisit their discoveries, in light of what else was determined.

The bottom line of this case is simple — Francesca did not commit academic fraud. Yet to unpack the charges and evidence to reject those charges against her is not simple. For anyone keen to dive deep into the material, I will make the material available. But for everyone else simply interested in understanding the argument, and the basis for believing her innocence, I will present the story in the easiest way to understand and to follow.

This will take time. Each episode will be a conversation. I will lead each conversation. The participants I will be speaking with will change, depending on the episode. Francesca will be part of some of these conversations, but rarely. It will be the evidence as unpacked in these conversations that will convince you or not. Her part will be to fill out the story.

Francesca is currently involved in civil litigation against Harvard. We’ll touch on those issues, but they are not the focus of this story, and I am not involved in that litigation.

Nonetheless, there is one point about that litigation that it is important for me to make clear up front. As I stated at the start of that litigation, I believe it was a fundamental error for her lawyers to charge Data Colada with defamation. The work that collaboration does is critically important. And whether I agree with their conclusions or not, it was wrong to involve them in that civil suit.

I expect there will be 6 to 8 episodes in this series, though that may change depending upon how the conversation develops. My promise is to work as hard as I can to present the material as fairly and clearly as I can to establish both the innocence of Francesca Gino and the injustice of the process that has led to this result.

One final note about the target of this criticism: Harvard University.

I have been a professor at Harvard Law School since 2009. (I was here for an earlier stint from 1997-2000 before moving to Stanford.) I have always considered my appointment to be an extraordinary honor. I love the law school and my colleagues, and especially respect and am honored to teach my students. And in this moment, I can’t begin to describe the enormous pride I have about the courage that Harvard is demonstrating through its defense against the illegal and unconstitutional actions of President Trump. Harvard is acting as each of us should — with courage, and integrity — and it deserves endless respect for that. It is earning its motto — Veritas.

But the actions Harvard has allowed to unfold in this case have effectively ended the academic career of an extraordinary teacher and scholar, unjustly. And while I am certain that there will be many who, regardless of the evidence presented here, will continue to believe she is guilty as charged, the least she deserves from all of us is the very best argument that can be mustered for what I am certain is true: That she did not commit academic fraud, and has been unjustly removed through a process that none could call fair.

Stay tuned, with patience. Much more to follow.