The (Seemingly) Endless Story - Part 2

It may be hard to recall, given all the things that have happened since this past April when we last had a blog entry about Harvard's Francesca Gino case. Probably the best way to re-acquaint yourself with this tale is to type "Gino" into the search engine that goes with this blog. But in essence, she was a rising, or maybe risen, star prof at the Harvard B-school specializing in empirical behavioral research on such subjects as honesty. Then, allegations of manipulated data in her studies were made by outside researchers, investigated by Harvard, and found by Harvard to be credible.

She sued the researchers who had brought their evidence to Harvard's attention. The Wall St. Journal reports that the defamation case against those researchers has been dismissed:

A university investigation concluding that Harvard Business School faculty member Francesca Gino’s research contained manipulated data led to her being placed on unpaid administrative leave last year. A federal judge has dismissed defamation claims lodged by a Harvard Business School professor in a lawsuit against the university and outside critics of her work.

Francesca Gino, at the time a star Harvard Business School faculty member, argued that her career and reputation were ruined by accusations that four of her studies contained falsified data. The allegations were published online by three behavioral scientists who blogged at the website Data Colada. Separately, an investigative report by the university concluded that Gino’s work contained manipulated data and led to her being placed on unpaid administrative leave last year.

On Wednesday, a judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled that the criticisms were protected by the First Amendment...

The judge allowed some of Gino’s claims in the case, involving the university’s actions regarding her employment, to stand...

Full story at https://www.wsj.com/science/harvard-francesca-gino-defamation-claims-dismissed-b755a88a.