Why My Innocence Was Not Found Originally

Two distinct sets of process problems caused the HBS process not to find me innocent. First, the policy HBS used was improper in ways I discuss on this page. Second, the policy was not followed in ways I explain on the page “A Broken Process.”

When an academic is charged with fraud, his or her university convenes a process to determine responsibility. As with any fair process, that process begins with a presumption of innocence; it establishes that the burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove misconduct. The university’s fact-finders then evaluate the evidence to determine whether that burden of proof was met. 

Harvard Business School had a fair and adequate process (see their procedure and also this one) for evaluating charges of academic misconduct. That process was appropriately flexible, anticipating a wide range of possible allegations. It created no artificial limits on how an accused faculty member could attempt to clear his or her name, nor did it set any arbitrary rules about the investigation. For years, this process appears to have served Harvard just fine.  

In July 2021, when Data Colada contacted HBS with concerns about my research, HBS should have followed its then-existing policy. Instead, HBS created a new policy – before the School informed me of the allegations, effectively just for me and just for this matter. HBS imposed this policy without vetting it with faculty, or receiving the approval of the faculty to change its academic fraud procedures. Such approval is standard practice at HBS and any decent university for introducing a new or revised faculty policy.

These changes made it impossible for me to mount an adequate defense.  

The new policy limited the number of advisors I could talk to—I was allowed just two.

This change is extraordinary. With my career, reputation, and life on the line, I was limited to two people to help me. What possible reason could there be for this limitation?

At the urging of HBS’s new Research Integrity Officer, I used one of my two advisor slots to hire a lawyer. As a second advisor, I chose an HBS colleague and mentor. This left no slots for the other experts that could have helped me. Specifically, as I was charged with manipulating data, I needed access to IT forensics, and I needed help to demonstrate errors in Data Colada’s data processing and statistical inferences. And I also needed moral support, a lot of it. A limit to two advisors may sound innocuous. But for the range of questions I was facing, it was a genuine limitation – improperly imposed on me, without foundation in the policy in effect at the time when HBS received an allegation against me.

The new policy stated that I must not discuss the investigation or anything related to it with others.

I wanted to reach out to collaborators to ask them questions. I wanted to talk to research assistants. I wanted to reach out to students who had participated in my lab. When I finally did so, in January 2023, out of desperation given the draft report I had received from the committee, I had to resort to weird contortions to justify my strange requests – and in these contortions, I could reveal neither the urgency nor the life-altering importance of the questions I was asking. The old policy would have allowed me to simply ask for what I needed – and, if I wanted, to tell my contacts why this was so crucially important. The old policy would certainly have given me a better chance to prove what is true — that I am innocent. 

The new policy put an administrator (the newly-created Research Integrity Officer) between the subject of the investigation and the investigating committee.

This prevented me from speaking freely with the committee investigating me. Under the policy in effect when Harvard received the allegations about me, I would have been entitled to engage in a genuine dialogue with the committee (comprised of tenured members of the HBS faculty). I would have been entitled to a reasonable time to consider their questions, to investigate them, and to respond in full. But in the new policy, I was limited to speaking with the committee when they asked to speak with me – and even then, only to answer their questions, which they expected me to answer on the fly (without taking time to examine the data and try to figure out what happened).

A friend told me of his experience being audited by the IRS: He described sitting across the table from the auditor, looking at documents together to piece out puzzles, and following up by phone and email as new facts came into focus. His experience with an IRS auditor was more flexible and fair than my experience working with the investigating committee. And when that auditor made an important mistake in her evaluation of my friend, he was allowed to gather additional documents and show her what she got wrong, without any limits on what he could send her, when, or how. It’s remarkable to think that an IRS auditor is more flexible and more interested in finding the truth than the HBS committee determining whether to end my academic career. But that is indeed the changed procedure that Harvard imposed upon me without the consent of the Business School faculty.