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Harvard sued behavioral scientist Francesca Gino for defamation in August, alleging the former Harvard Business School professor sent the school a falsified dataset to prove she did not commit data fraud.

The University’s lawyers accused Gino of modifying a spreadsheet on her laptop, then manually backdating it to 2010, so it would appear that she had been sent false data by another researcher rather than altered it herself.

Gino, who rose to prominence for her work on honesty, was accused in 2021 of manipulating data in four studies. HBS placed her on administrative leave in 2023 after an internal investigation determined she had committed research misconduct, then fired her in May after revoking her tenure.

But Gino has battled Harvard’s penalties in court since August 2023, accusing the University of defaming her, mishandling her tenure review process, and engaging in sex-based discrimination against her in violation of Title IX and Title VII policies.

Now, Harvard is turning the tables on Gino. In its counterclaim, filed on Aug. 18, the University alleged that she falsely accused HBS of ignoring exonerating evidence in its investigation process. But that evidence, Harvard claimed, was “invented out of thin air.”

Harvard has asked the judge in the case to award an unspecified amount in damages.

In a filing this summer, Gino accused the University of suing her as retaliation for her lawsuit. She denied Harvard’s claims in a response filed Wednesday — maintaining that she had indeed found a file that would show her innocence, and that she did not know whether Harvard had reviewed it — and asked the judge to dismiss the counterclaim.

The data in question was gathered in a study that Gino conducted in 2010, which would later become the subject of the first public accusations that she fabricated data.

In the study, Gino and colleagues asked participants to fill out a tax form and sign it either at the top of the page, at the bottom, or not at all. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2012, found that participants who signed the paper at the top were more likely to complete the form honestly.

The study’s results were generated based on a dataset that Gino’s team published on the research collaboration platform Open Science Framework. But both external researchers and an HBS investigation concluded that the dataset was likely altered, and Gino’s findings could not be generated from the raw data collected during the study.

When HBS first began investigating Gino in fall 2021, the school sequestered material from two of her computers, including her HBS-issued laptop. A search of the sequestered files in 2023 found several versions of the dataset.

Three were sent to Gino by her research assistant: one, containing partial data, on July 13; another, named Taxstudy.xlsx and containing a full version of the newly collected raw data, on July 16; and a third file, from July 27, that matched the July 16 spreadsheet.

The laptop also included a file, also called Taxstudy.xlsx, that was identical to the July 16 dataset and had been saved by Gino on July 17.

None of the four files matched the altered dataset that was posted to the OSF website and apparently used to produce the study results.

Throughout the investigation process, Gino maintained that someone else had passed her falsified data, which she had unwittingly used in the published study. According to Harvard’s complaint, she never mentioned possessing another copy of the data during the HBS inquiry.

But in fall 2023, half a year after the HBS inquiry found she had committed research misconduct, Gino began to publicly claim that Harvard had ignored another version of the dataset, which she referred to as the “July 16 OG file” and said would prove her innocence. In a post on her blog, she wrote that the July 16 file contained the raw data she had used to produce the study — and was consistent with the OSF dataset, unlike the spreadsheets from her RA that Harvard had reviewed.

The next year, as HBS pursued an investigation into her tenure status, Gino alleged the school had botched its extraction of material from her laptop, according to Harvard’s counterclaim. She told Harvard that she had hired a “proper forensic expert” to copy the materials on her laptop in January 2024, and she subsequently turned over a partially redacted version of the copy to HBS, according to the counterclaim.

When HBS’s research integrity officer examined the copy, he found that the July 17 dataset was gone, replaced by a file with the same name — but different contents, according to Harvard’s complaint. The new file was formatted like raw data but instead contained the OSF dataset, Harvard alleged.

HBS determined that the file was last saved on Sept. 23, 2023, but had been intentionally backdated to appear as if it was last modified on July 17, 2010.

In its August complaint against Gino, Harvard alleged that the file was intended to mislead investigators or the public into believing she had been sent altered data by an RA, rather than manipulating it herself.

“Upon information and belief, the 2023 Cover-Up File represents an abortive attempt by Professor Gino to intentionally manufacture evidence that would appear to exonerate her, which she later planned to and did disclose as the ‘July 16 OG file,’” Harvard’s lawyers wrote.

According to Harvard’s complaint, Gino refused to turn over the MacOS Terminal logs that HBS believed would show how she had manipulated metadata to backdate the file, citing attorney-client privilege.

Gino also removed her fall 2023 blog post describing the “July 16 OG file” after being contacted by Harvard about the discrepancies.

Harvard’s lawyers argued in the counterclaim that the University “suffered reputational damage and economic losses” as a result of what they called Gino’s false statements.

Gino “impugned and discredited members of the Investigation Committee, eroded internal trust in investigation processes, and damaged external confidence in the Harvard processes for assessing claims of research misconduct,” the University’s lawyers wrote.

But in claiming that the investigation into her work was full of holes, Gino has lodged complaints that extend far beyond whether Harvard properly reviewed the disputed dataset. In her lawsuit and on her website, she has alleged that Harvard violated their usual tenure revocation proceedings, having created a new “interim policy” just for Gino’s case, kept her in the dark about the charges levied against her, and administered overly harsh punishments.

Her case has found sympathy with some of her colleagues, including seven HBS faculty who wrote an anonymous op-ed in The Crimson in October 2023 defending her. They concurred that Harvard “violated its norms” and put unfair restrictions on Gino’s ability to defend herself.

Over the summer, two Harvard faculty members submitted declarations supporting Gino in her lawsuit. HBS professor Gary P. Pisano alleged that school administrators had instructed him not to communicate with Gino about the research misconduct allegations when they first surfaced, and that the school had failed to give her sufficient time to defend herself during its investigation.

Harvard Law School professor L. Lawrence Lessig accused HBS of giving Gino short shrift in its investigation, writing that the school interviewed only two of the 66 RAs that she had worked with and did not consult other research staff.

Neither Harvard spokespeople nor a lawyer for Gino responded to requests for comment for this article.

—Staff writer Evan H.C. Epstein can be reached at evan.epstein@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X at @Evan_HC_Epstein.

—Staff writer Graham W. Lee can be reached at graham.lee@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @grahamwonlee.