Does it Really Pay to Break the Rules
She was paid $1 Million per year to research and teach on the topics of "honesty and ethical behavior," but no longer. As of May 28, 2025, Harvard University researcher Francesca Gino has lost her tenure.
Why? Mik Olson of Not the Bee reports:
"The honesty professor has been officially canned for dishonesty while conducting studies on [wait for it!] ... dishonesty. ... So now we have an ethics expert embroiled in a legal battle over whether she cooked the academic books — you really can't make this stuff up. ... Anyways, word on the street is that Harvard is looking for a new ethics professor! Only requirement: Be Ethical."
Publisher Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine tweeted it this way:
Harvard behavioral scientist Francesca Gino, who was paid $1 million a year to study honesty and ethical behavior, was accused of manipulating observations to better support her conclusions. Now lost tenure. Do they still teach irony at Harvard?
The accusations ranged from data falsification to plagiarized passages in some of her high-profile publications.
Ironically (errr, unironically), Professor Gino actually produced a video short several years ago entitled "Rebel Talent: Why It Pays to Break the Rules at Work and in Life."
Yep, you really CAN'T make this stuff up!
With instructional videos on the benefits of breaking the rules, is it any wonder this "ethics" and "honesy" professor would find herself on the wrong side of, well, ethics and hoesty?
Hypocrisy is the sworn enemy of the frutiful Christian life. We love to put our best face forward, virtue signalling our ethical and honest Christian walk and lifestyle, all while self-justifying our bending of the rules, a little here, a little there, until finally, our sins are found out. "Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known" (Luke 12:2, ESV).
In the end, it's hard to live a lie. Honesty is ALWAYS the best policy.
"You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye" (Matthew 7:5, ESV).
"You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men’" (Matthew 15:7-9, ESV).
"Having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people" (2 Timothy 3:5, ESV).
Woman Films Her Own Abortion
Romanticizing Our Spiritual Junk
“Andy Warhol (1928-1987) started out as a very successful commercial illustrator, and became a painter, photographer, printmaker, film and video maker, magazine publisher, author, and celebrity. He had his first art show in 1962, at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles which showed his "32 Campbell's Soup Cans." From that point on Warhol's work revolutionized the art world.” – Amazon.com
Warhol held onto his physical junk with the same tenacity we hold on to our spiritual junk. We don’t want to let it go. To justify ourselves, we repackage it as something artistic, romantic even. Promiscuity becomes free love. Anger becomes open, honest expression. Selfishness becomes self-actualization. We stubbornly resist God’s offer to overcome our possession obsession because we love our junk.