Cyril Burt

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Cyril Burt bigraphy, stories - Psychologists

Cyril Burt : biography

3 March 1883 – 10 October 1971

Sir Cyril Lodowic Burt (3 March 1883 – 10 October 1971) was an English educational psychologist who made contributions to educational psychology and statistics.

Burt is known for his studies on the heritability of IQ. Shortly after he died, his studies of inheritance and intelligence came into disrepute after evidence emerged indicating he had falsified research data. Some scholars have asserted that Burt did not commit fraud.

Primary sources

Archival collections related to Burt in the United Kingdom.National Register of Archives , Accessed 18 August 2007.

  • Liverpool University Special Collection and Archives holds Burt’s personal papers (Ref: D191), and the papers of his secretary Margarethe Archer, (Ref: D432).
  • The British Psychological Society History of Psychology Centre holds Burt’s correspondence and reprints, c1920-1971 .
  • Oxford University: Bodleian Library, Special Collections and Western Manuscripts holds Burt’s correspondence with CD Darlington, 1960–1966, and correspondence with Society for Protection of Science and Learning, 193-1934 (Ref: SPSL) .
  • Imperial College, University of London, Archives and Corporate Records Unit holds Burt’s correspondence with Herbert Dingle, 1951-1959 (Ref: H Dingle collection) .
  • University College London (UCL), University of London, Special Collections holds letters from Burt to LS Penrose, (Ref: Penrose) .

"The Burt Affair"

Over the course of his career, Burt published numerous articles and books on a host of topics ranging from psychometrics to philosophy of science to parapsychology. It is his research in behavior genetics, most notably in studying the heritability of intelligence (as measured in IQ tests) using twin studies that have created the most controversy, frequently referred to as "the Burt Affair."

Joynson, R. B. (1989). The Burt Affair. London: Routledge.Fletcher, R. (1991). Science, Ideology and the Media: The Cyril Burt Scandal. New Brunswick, USA: Transaction Publishers.Mackintosh, N. J. (1995). Cyril Burt: Fraud or Framed? Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shortly after Burt died it became known that all of his notes and records had been burnt, and he was accused of falsifying research data. The 2007 Encyclopædia Britannica noted that it is widely acknowledged that his later work was flawed and many academics agree that data were falsified, though his earlier work is often accepted as valid. Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Britannica Concise Encyclopædia. 19 Apr. 2007. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2005.

From the late 1970s, it was generally accepted that "he had fabricated some of the data, though some of his earlier work remained unaffected by this revelation." This was due in large part to research by Oliver Gillie (1976) and Leon Kamin (1974).Kamin, L.J. (1974). The Science and Politics of IQ. Potomac, Maryland: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Gillie, O. (24 October 1976). Crucial data was faked by eminent psychologist. London: Sunday Times. The possibility of fabrication was first brought to the attention of the scientific community when Kamin noticed that Burt’s correlation coefficients of monozygotic and dizygotic twins’ IQ scores were the same to three decimal places, across articles – even when new data were twice added to the sample of twins. Leslie Hearnshaw, a close friend of Burt and his official biographer, concluded after examining the criticisms that most of Burt’s data from after World War II were unreliable or fraudulent.*Hearnshaw, L. (1979). Cyril Burt: Psychologist. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.

In 1976, the London Sunday Times claimed that two of Burt’s supposed collaborators, Margaret Howard and J. Conway, were invented by Burt himself. They based this on the lack of independent articles published by them in scientific journals, and the fact that they allegedly only appeared in the historical record as reviewers of Burt’s books in the Journal of Statistical Psychology when the journal was redacted by Burt. However, Miss Howard was also mentioned in the membership list of the British Psychological Society, Prof. John Cohen remembered her well during the 1930s and Prof. Donald MacRae had personally received an article from her in 1949 and 1950. According to Ronald Fletcher there is also full documentary evidence of the existence of Miss Conway.John Philippe Rushton: "New evidence on Sir Cyril Burt: His 1964 Speech to the Association of Educational Psychologists". Intelligence 30 (2002) 555–567Fletcher, Ronald 1991 Science, ideology & the media: The Cyril Butt affair. New Brunswick, N J: Transaction Publishers.