A Massachusetts judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by honesty researcher Francesca Gino against three data sleuths who alleged that several of her publications contained falsified data.
Gino, a professor at Harvard Business School (HBS), claimed that statements made by behavioral scientists Leif Nelson, Joe Simmons, and Uri Simonsohn on their blog, Data Colada, were “false and defamatory” and sought $25 million in damages. She also sued Harvard University and the dean of HBS, alleging defamation as well as gender discrimination, breach of contract, and other violations.
Data Colada and Harvard filed motions to dismiss the case, making their arguments in front of Massachusetts Judge Myong Joun in May.
In Joun’s decision, published yesterday, he dismissed Gino’s claims against the bloggers and some of her claims against Harvard, including her assertion that the university’s actions—such as posting on her staff page that she was on “administrative leave”—constituted defamation.
“It’s great news, for Data Colada and for science,” says University of Melbourne psychologist Simine Vazire, who helped set up a crowdfunding campaign to cover Data Colada’s legal expenses, which raised more than $378,000. “Dismissal at this relatively early stage helps give researchers confidence that such lawsuits aren’t likely to be taken seriously.”
None of the Data Colada bloggers immediately responded to a request for comment. But in a post on the social media platform X, Simmons, a behavioral scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, said, “Those who work to correct the scientific record can sleep better tonight. Those who don’t want it corrected, well, I don’t care how they sleep.”
Data Colada first publicly raised concerns about Gino’s work in a series of blog posts in June 2023, describing apparent data manipulation in papers on topics such as honesty, creativity, and authenticity. The bloggers had sent their findings to Harvard in 2021, prompting an investigation.
That investigation culminated in a 1300-page report, released in March as part of the lawsuit, in which HBS concluded that Gino had “committed research misconduct intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly.” As a result of the HBS investigation, three papers co-authored by Gino were retracted in 2023; a fourth paper containing apparently fabricated data had already been retracted in 2021.
Joun wrote in his decision that Data Colada’s assertions of fraud in Gino’s work are protected by the First Amendment, because they represent the bloggers’ own, subjective interpretation of the evidence. As a public figure, Gino would have to prove that statements about her were made with “actual malice” in order to be judged defamatory, Joun writes.
However, Joun partly denied Harvard and the HBS dean’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit. Although he dismissed Gino’s claims that Harvard had defamed her and interfered with her other professional relationships, he has allowed her to proceed with claims that Harvard breached her employment contract and treated her differently from other employees, by instituting a new and hastily assembled “interim” research misconduct policy right when it began to investigate her case.
“Today’s decision clearly demonstrates Harvard treated Professor Gino differently from other misconduct investigations and their own stated policies,” said Gino’s attorney Andrew Miltenberg, in a statement to Science. “The burden of proof required to decimate a career and revoke tenure must be based on evidence, not theory and this judgment shows that others agree. We are pleased with the court’s decision to allow this litigation to continue and that Harvard will have to answer for how they have destroyed her career and put every member of the Harvard faculty at risk.”
The fallout from the saga is likely to continue. Simonsohn and several of Gino’s co-authors last year launched a project to assess the reliability of her past papers. So far, this has led to a further retraction in February and a correction in July. Science reported in April that Gino also appeared to have plagiarized passages of text in some of her publications. Gino has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
Vazire says that although the lawsuit against Data Colada has been dismissed, the threat of similar lawsuits will likely still deter other researchers from publishing scientific criticism. “Even having to defend a baseless lawsuit through a motion to dismiss is an incredible burden. … We still have a lot of work to do to make scientific correction easier and more common.”
More: https://www.science.org/content/article/honesty-researcher-s-lawsuit-against-data-sleuths-dismissed
