And yet more on Harvard's data manipulation affair

From time to time on this blog, we have noted developments in the ongoing case of Francesca Gino, a former tenured professor in the Harvard Business School who studied honesty but was accused of data manipulation.

Eventually, Harvard dismissed her and, not surprisingly, litigation ensued.

Now it turns out that wealthy investor Bill Ackman - who has his own gripes with Harvard - is financing Gino's legal defense. In a recent X (twitter) post, he has published a long essay (yes, you can have essay-length tweets on X if if you pay) which outlines Gino's case:

...This is an important story about @Harvard, academic institutions, due process, and someone whose life is at stake, so I thought to share the high-level facts in an effort for this story to be heard, perhaps someday eventually as widely as the accusations and the conviction have already been disseminated.

By way of background, I have long had an interest in behavioral science/economics. To that end, the Pershing Square Foundation made grants of approximately $40 million to Harvard University to enable it to recruit some of the best behavioral scientists/economists in the world to create a center of excellence (The Foundations of Human Behavior) for research into better understanding human behavior.

My interest in Harvard and behavioral economics made me particularly interested in a story that first publicly appeared in June of 2023 when a Harvard Business School professor named Francesca Gino whose research focused on “honesty and ethical behavior” was (ironically) accused of falsifying her research. In June 2023, she was put on administrative leave, stripped of her titles, and removed as head of the Unit of Negotiation, Organizations and Markets at HBS. Nearly two years later, after a lengthy investigation, in May 2025, Gino's tenure was revoked and she was fired...

When Francesca reached out to me in June of 2024 for help, I was sufficiently compelled to do so. We have been funding her legal and expert costs since that time, and we will provide whatever resources she needs to clear her name...

Full tweet at https://x.com/BillAckman/status/2006958483220955275.

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Note: For our previous coverage of the Gino affair, type "Gino" into the search engine for this blog.