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Harvard Dishonesty Expert Accused of Faking Study Results

Harvard reportedly informed a colleague of Francesca Gino that it appeared as if results from a co-authored study had been tampered with.

A behavioral scientist at Harvard has been accused of tampering with the results in several of her studies, which—ironically—includes one supposedly about eliciting honesty. Francesca Gino’s work came under scrutiny after a recent article from The Chronicle of Higher Education revealed Harvard told one of the co-authors of her 2012 paper that the results seemed to be fabricated. The day after the article was published, blog DataColada released a series of posts “detailing evidence of fraud in four academic papers” written by Gino. In one study from the 2012 paper, Gino conducted a lab experiment in which participants were told they would receive $1 for every puzzle solved on a worksheet. Later, they reported how much money they earned from the puzzles. The study showed participants were more likely to honestly report their puzzle income if an attestation of accuracy was included at the top of the form rather than the bottom. However, DataColada suspects the data points were artificially altered, according to digital records obtained by the blog’s authors. Gino did not respond to a request for comment from The New York Times, and Harvard Business School declined to comment.