Miltenberg: “Harvard Business School Will Make Its Investigation Report On Francesca Gino Public,” Poets & Quants

Harvard Business School’s internal investigative report into allegations that Professor Francesca Gino committed academic misconduct will now be made public. A federal judge ruled in favor of the school’s motion to release the 1,100-page report. U.S. District Judge Myong J. Joun concluded that the report is a judicial record that carries a presumptive right of public access and that Gino had failed to show good cause for keeping the report sealed. The judge said Harvard may redact portions of the report that concern Gino’s private health data, as well as names and other identifying information of witnesses. Harvard sought the report’s release along with  two media organizations, The New Yorker magazine and The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Harvard’s lawyers argued that the report undercuts a number of the allegations in Gino’s $25 million defamation lawsuit. The judge’s decision prompted an immediate reaction from Gino’s lawyers in her lawsuit against Harvard, HBS Dean Skrikant Datar, and three professors who author a blog called Data Colada which first alleged that Gino committed data fraud in several of her research papers. “While I disagree with releasing a one-sided, unreliable, and confidential HR document without any context and without opportunity for my client to dispute the factual allegations through the normal process of litigation and discovery, the silver lining is that people can see for themselves that this investigation was a charade,” says Andrew T. Miltenberg, Gino’s attorney in a statement. “Harvard found no evidence that Professor Gino modified data, not a single co-author or research assistant interviewed believed she did it and their own forensics firm did not claim they proved Prof. Gino’s guilt.”

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