More Bad Press at Harvard as the University Moves into Data Manipulation and Double Standard Territory
Proven plagiarism is just fine at Harvard, but allegations of data manipulation will require termination of an award winning, tenured professor. Just another gut punch for Harvard!
Harvard University is taking yet another hit to its once stellar reputation. This time, it is not because of the overwhelming plagiarism that ex-President, Claudine Gay was found guilty of. It is due to allegations of data manipulation with a great big helping of double standards.
A new report at The Gateway Pundit explains that Harvard Business School Professor, and Harvard Star Honesty Researcher Francesca Gino is being accused of manipulating data in a study on why people cheat and act dishonestly. Quite ironic…don’t you think? Click here to see the report.
According to the report, Professor Gino has claimed that her and the staff members who worked on the report may have made mistakes or it is also possible that other devious actors went into the reports and changed the data in an effort to create falsified evidence thus allowing for accusations of wrongdoing.
Regardless of the reason for the misinformation in the report, Harvard has placed Gino on administrative leave, and the powers that be are recommending for here to be terminated for being dishonest with her report on why people cheat and are dishonest.
On March 15th, this year, John Trimmer of ARS Technica, reported the following information regarding this new scandal at the college.
Gino was not implicated in the fabrication of the data. But the attention of the Data Colada team (Uri Simonsohn, Leif Nelson, and Joe Simmons) had been drawn to the paper. They found additional indications of completely independent problems in other data from the paper that did come from her work, which caused them to examine additional papers from Gino, coming up with evidence for potential research fraud in four of them.
Before posting it on their blog, however, the Data Colada team had provided their evidence to Harvard, which launched its own investigation. Their posts came out after Harvard's investigation concluded that Gino's research had serious issues, and she was placed on administrative leave as the university looked into revoking her tenure. It also alerted the journals that had published the three yet-to-be-retracted papers about the issues.
My goodness, can you smell the double standard in this one. Claudine Gay may have stepped down as president of Harvard over her plagiarism scandal, but she continues on at the school as a tenured professor of African and African American Studies, even after it was learned that she plagiarized others on multiple occasions. And although there were plagiarism experts who actually confirmed that she was guilty, she continued to deny the accusations. Gay made the following statement in her resignation letter when she stepped down on January 2, 2024.
It is with a heavy heart but a deep love for Harvard that I write to share that I will be stepping down as president. After consultation with members of the Corporation, it has become clear that it is in the best interests of Harvard for me to resign so that our community can navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge with a focus on the institution rather than any individual.
Amidst all of this, it has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor — two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am — and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.
If the school has any integrity left to save, both Claudine Gay and Francesca Gino should be terminated. Claudine Gay is guilty as charged of plagiarism, and it appears that Francesca Gino is also guilty of research fraud. Both offenses are extremely serious in any circumstance…but with the massive standards of integrity at Harvard, this shit ain’t supposed to happen!
So, why is it that Claudine Gay can continue on as a highly paid professor after such a clear-cut case of plagiarism multiple times, while Francesca Gino gets placed on administrative leave with the very likely outcome of being fired? Both offenses are completely dishonest and should require termination. Is it possible that Harvard is also considering race in this outcome, with Claudine Gay being black and Francesca Gino being white? Considering the fact that Claudine Gay did throw the race card out in her resignation letter, I’d say there is a pretty good possibility that this may be one reason for the double standard. If anyone can think of other reasons for this double standard, I am all ears.