Cyril Burt
Encyclopedia
Sir Cyril Lodowic Burt 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 intentional fraud.
Burt's father initially kept a chemist shop to support his family while he studied medicine. On qualifying, he became the assistant house surgeon and obstetrical assistant at Westminster Hospital
, London. The younger Cyril Burt's education began in London at a Board school near St. James's Park
.
In 1890 the family briefly moved to Jersey then to Snitterfield
, Warwickshire
in 1893, where Burt's father opened a rural practice. Early in Burt's life he showed a precocious nature, so much so that his father, a physician, often took the young Burt with him on his medical rounds. One of the elder Burt's more famous patients was Darwin Galton, brother of Francis Galton
. The visits the Burts made to the Galton estate not only allowed the young Burt to learn about the work of Francis Galton, but also allowed Burt to meet him on multiple occasions and to be strongly drawn to his ideas; especially his studies in statistics and individual differences, two defining characters of the London School of Psychology whose membership includes both Galton and Burt.
He attended King's School, Warwick
, from 1892 to 1895, and later won a scholarship to Christ's Hospital
, then located in London, where he developed his interest in psychology.
From 1902 he studied at Jesus College, Oxford
, where he specialized in philosophy and psychology, the latter under William McDougall
. McDougall, knowing Burt's interest in Galton's work, suggested that he focus his senior project on psychometrics, thus giving Burt his initial inquiry into the development and structure of mental tests, an interest that would last the rest of his life. Burt was one of a group of students who worked with McDougall, which included William Brown, John Carl Frugel, May Smith, who all went on to have distinguished careers in psychology. Burt graduated with second-class honours in 1906 which he supplemented by a teaching diploma.
In 1907 McDougall invited Burt to help with a nation-wide survey of physical and mental characteristics of the British people, proposed by Francis Galton, in which he was to work on the standardization of psychological tests. This work brought Burt into contact with eugenics
, Charles Spearman
, and Karl Pearson
.
In the summer of 1908, Burt visited the University of Würzburg
, Germany, where he first met the psychologist Oswald Külpe
.
's model of general intelligence to analyse his data on the performance of schoolchildren in a battery of tests. This first research project was to define Burt's life's work in quantitative intelligence testing, eugenics
, and the inheritance of intelligence
. One of the conclusions in his 1909 paper was that upper-class children in private preparatory schools did better in the tests than those in the ordinary elementary schools, and that the difference was innate.
In 1913, Burt took the part-time position of a school psychologist
for the London County Council
(LCC), with the responsibility of picking out the 'feeble-minded' children, in accordance with the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913. He notably established that girls were equal to boys in general intelligence. The post also allowed him to work in Spearman's laboratory, and received research assistants from the National Institute of Industrial Psychology.
Burt was much involved in the initiation of child guidance in Great Britain and his 1925 publication The Young Delinquent led to opening of the London Child Guidance Clinic in Islington
in 1927. In 1924 Burt was also appointed part-time professor of educational psychology
at the London Day Training College (LDTC), and carried out much of his child guidance work on the premises.
and Hans Eysenck
, and toward the end of his life, Arthur Jensen
and Chris Brand
. Burt was a consultant with the committees that developed the Eleven plus
examinations. This issue, and the allegations of fraudulent scholarship against him, are discussed in various books and articles listed below, including Cyril Burt: Fraud or Framed and The Mismeasure of Man
.
In 1942, Burt was elected President of the British Psychological Society and in 1946 became the first British psychologist to be knighted for his contributions to psychological testing and for making educational opportunities more widely available, according to an account by J. Philippe Rushton
. Burt was a member of the London School of Differential Psychology
, and of the British Eugenics Society. Because he had suggested on radio in 1946 the formation of an organization for people with high IQ scores, he was made honorary president of Mensa
in 1960. He officially joined Mensa soon thereafter.
At age 68, Burt retired but continued writing articles and books. He died of cancer at age 88 in London on 10 October 1971.
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." Shortly after Burt died it had become 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.
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). 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.
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.
William H. Tucker
argued in a 1997 article that: "A comparison of his twin sample with that from other well documented studies, however, leaves little doubt that he committed fraud." Robert Joynson and Ronald Fletcher published books in support of Burt. Cambridge University Professor of Psychology Nicholas Mackintosh edited Cyril Burt: Fraud or Framed?, which was presented by the publisher as arguing that "his defenders have sometimes, but by no means always, been correct, and that his critics have often jumped to hasty conclusions."
Psychologists Arthur Jensen
and J. Philippe Rushton
have pointed out that the controversial correlations reported by Burt are in line with the correlations found in subsequent twin studies. Rushton (1997) wrote that five different studies on twins reared apart by independent researchers corroborated Cyril Burt's findings and had given almost the same heritability estimate (average estimate 0.75 vs. 0.77 by Burt). Jensen has also argued that "[n]o one with any statistical sophistication, and Burt had plenty, would report exactly the same correlation, 0.77, three times in succession if he were trying to fake the data." W.D. Hamilton claimed in a 2000 book review that the claims made by his detractors in the so-called "Burt Affair" had been either wrong or grossly exaggerated.
According to Earl B. Hunt
, it may never be found out whether Burt was intentionally fraudulent or merely careless. Noting that later studies of the heritability of IQ have produced results very similar to those of Burt's, Hunt argues that Burt did not harm science in the narrow sense of misleading scientists with false results, but that in the broader sense science in general and behavior genetics in particular were profoundly harmed by the Burt Affair, leading to an unjustified general rejection of genetic studies of intelligence and a drying up of funding for such studies.
.
Educational psychology
Educational psychology is the study of how humans learn in educational settings, the effectiveness of educational interventions, the psychology of teaching, and the social psychology of schools as organizations. Educational psychology is concerned with how students learn and develop, often focusing...
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
Scientific misconduct
Scientific misconduct is the violation of the standard codes of scholarly conduct and ethical behavior in professional scientific research. A Lancet review on Handling of Scientific Misconduct in Scandinavian countries provides the following sample definitions: *Danish definition: "Intention or...
research data. Some scholars have asserted that Burt did not commit intentional fraud.
Childhood and education
Burt was born on 3 March 1883, the first child of Cyril Cecil Barrow Burt (b.1857), a medical practitioner, and his wife Martha. He was born in London (some sources give his place of birth as Stratford on Avon, probably because his entry in Who's Who gave his father's address as Snitterfield, Stratford; in fact the Burt family moved to Snitterfield when he was ten).Burt's father initially kept a chemist shop to support his family while he studied medicine. On qualifying, he became the assistant house surgeon and obstetrical assistant at Westminster Hospital
Westminster Hospital
Westminster Hospital was a hospital in London, England, founded in 1719. In 1834 a medical school attached to the hospital was formally founded....
, London. The younger Cyril Burt's education began in London at a Board school near St. James's Park
St. James's Park
St. James's Park is a 23 hectare park in the City of Westminster, central London - the oldest of the Royal Parks of London. The park lies at the southernmost tip of the St. James's area, which was named after a leper hospital dedicated to St. James the Less.- Geographical location :St. James's...
.
In 1890 the family briefly moved to Jersey then to Snitterfield
Snitterfield
Snitterfield is a village and civil parish in the Stratford on Avon district of Warwickshire, England, less than a mile to the north of the A46 road, 4 ½ miles from Stratford upon Avon, 6 ½ miles from Warwick and from Coventry.-History:...
, Warwickshire
Warwickshire
Warwickshire is a landlocked non-metropolitan county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, although the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare...
in 1893, where Burt's father opened a rural practice. Early in Burt's life he showed a precocious nature, so much so that his father, a physician, often took the young Burt with him on his medical rounds. One of the elder Burt's more famous patients was Darwin Galton, brother of Francis Galton
Francis Galton
Sir Francis Galton /ˈfrɑːnsɪs ˈgɔːltn̩/ FRS , cousin of Douglas Strutt Galton, half-cousin of Charles Darwin, was an English Victorian polymath: anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician, and statistician...
. The visits the Burts made to the Galton estate not only allowed the young Burt to learn about the work of Francis Galton, but also allowed Burt to meet him on multiple occasions and to be strongly drawn to his ideas; especially his studies in statistics and individual differences, two defining characters of the London School of Psychology whose membership includes both Galton and Burt.
He attended King's School, Warwick
Warwick
Warwick is the county town of Warwickshire, England. The town lies upon the River Avon, south of Coventry and just west of Leamington Spa and Whitnash with which it is conjoined. As of the 2001 United Kingdom census, it had a population of 23,350...
, from 1892 to 1895, and later won a scholarship to Christ's Hospital
Christ's Hospital
Christ's Hospital is an English coeducational independent day and boarding school with Royal Charter located in the Sussex countryside just south of Horsham in Horsham District, West Sussex, England...
, then located in London, where he developed his interest in psychology.
From 1902 he studied at Jesus College, Oxford
Jesus College, Oxford
Jesus College is one of the colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It is in the centre of the city, on a site between Turl Street, Ship Street, Cornmarket Street and Market Street...
, where he specialized in philosophy and psychology, the latter under William McDougall
William McDougall (psychologist)
William McDougall FRS was an early twentieth century psychologist who spent the first part of his career in the United Kingdom and the latter part in the United States...
. McDougall, knowing Burt's interest in Galton's work, suggested that he focus his senior project on psychometrics, thus giving Burt his initial inquiry into the development and structure of mental tests, an interest that would last the rest of his life. Burt was one of a group of students who worked with McDougall, which included William Brown, John Carl Frugel, May Smith, who all went on to have distinguished careers in psychology. Burt graduated with second-class honours in 1906 which he supplemented by a teaching diploma.
In 1907 McDougall invited Burt to help with a nation-wide survey of physical and mental characteristics of the British people, proposed by Francis Galton, in which he was to work on the standardization of psychological tests. This work brought Burt into contact with eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
, Charles Spearman
Charles Spearman
Charles Edward Spearman, FRS was an English psychologist known for work in statistics, as a pioneer of factor analysis, and for Spearman's rank correlation coefficient...
, and Karl Pearson
Karl Pearson
Karl Pearson FRS was an influential English mathematician who has been credited for establishing the disciplineof mathematical statistics....
.
In the summer of 1908, Burt visited the University of Würzburg
University of Würzburg
The University of Würzburg is a university in Würzburg, Germany, founded in 1402. The university is a member of the distinguished Coimbra Group.-Name:...
, Germany, where he first met the psychologist Oswald Külpe
Oswald Külpe
Oswald Külpe was one of the structural psychologists of the late 19th and early 20th century.-Biography:...
.
Work in educational psychology
In 1908 Burt took up the post of Lecturer in Psychology and Assistant Lecturer in Physiology at Liverpool University, where he was to work under the famed physiologist Sir Charles Sherrington. In 1909 Burt made use of Charles SpearmanCharles Spearman
Charles Edward Spearman, FRS was an English psychologist known for work in statistics, as a pioneer of factor analysis, and for Spearman's rank correlation coefficient...
's model of general intelligence to analyse his data on the performance of schoolchildren in a battery of tests. This first research project was to define Burt's life's work in quantitative intelligence testing, eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
, and the inheritance of intelligence
Inheritance of intelligence
The study of the heritability of IQ investigates the relative importance of genetics and environment for variation in intelligence quotient in a population...
. One of the conclusions in his 1909 paper was that upper-class children in private preparatory schools did better in the tests than those in the ordinary elementary schools, and that the difference was innate.
In 1913, Burt took the part-time position of a school psychologist
School psychology
School psychology is a field that applies principles of clinical psychology and educational psychology to the diagnosis and treatment of children's and adolescents' behavioral and learning problems...
for the London County Council
London County Council
London County Council was the principal local government body for the County of London, throughout its 1889–1965 existence, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today known as Inner London and was replaced by the Greater London Council...
(LCC), with the responsibility of picking out the 'feeble-minded' children, in accordance with the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913. He notably established that girls were equal to boys in general intelligence. The post also allowed him to work in Spearman's laboratory, and received research assistants from the National Institute of Industrial Psychology.
Burt was much involved in the initiation of child guidance in Great Britain and his 1925 publication The Young Delinquent led to opening of the London Child Guidance Clinic in Islington
Islington
Islington is a neighbourhood in Greater London, England and forms the central district of the London Borough of Islington. It is a district of Inner London, spanning from Islington High Street to Highbury Fields, encompassing the area around the busy Upper Street...
in 1927. In 1924 Burt was also appointed part-time professor of educational psychology
Educational psychology
Educational psychology is the study of how humans learn in educational settings, the effectiveness of educational interventions, the psychology of teaching, and the social psychology of schools as organizations. Educational psychology is concerned with how students learn and develop, often focusing...
at the London Day Training College (LDTC), and carried out much of his child guidance work on the premises.
Later career
In 1931 he resigned his position at the LCC and the LDTC after he was appointed Professor and Chair of Psychology at University College, London, taking over the position from Charles Spearman, thus ending his almost 20-year career as a school psychological practitioner. While at London, Burt influenced many students, including Raymond CattellRaymond Cattell
Raymond Bernard Cattell was a British and American psychologist, known for his exploration of many areas in psychology...
and Hans Eysenck
Hans Eysenck
Hans Jürgen Eysenck was a German-British psychologist who spent most of his career in Britain, best remembered for his work on intelligence and personality, though he worked in a wide range of areas...
, and toward the end of his life, Arthur Jensen
Arthur Jensen
Arthur Robert Jensen is a Professor Emeritus of educational psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. Jensen is known for his work in psychometrics and differential psychology, which is concerned with how and why individuals differ behaviorally from one another.He is a major proponent...
and Chris Brand
Chris Brand
Christopher Richard Brand is an English psychological and psychometric researcher who gained media attention for his controversial statements on race and intelligence and pedophilia. He went to Queen Elizabeth's, Barnet, and is a graduate of The Queen's College, Oxford, and a fellow of Nuffield...
. Burt was a consultant with the committees that developed the Eleven plus
Eleven plus
In the United Kingdom, the 11-plus or Eleven plus is an examination administered to some students in their last year of primary education, governing admission to various types of secondary school. The name derives from the age group for secondary entry: 11–12 years...
examinations. This issue, and the allegations of fraudulent scholarship against him, are discussed in various books and articles listed below, including Cyril Burt: Fraud or Framed and The Mismeasure of Man
The Mismeasure of Man
The Mismeasure of Man , by Stephen Jay Gould, is a history and critique of the statistical methods and cultural motivations underlying biological determinism, the belief that “the social and economic differences between human groups — primarily races, classes, and sexes — arise from inherited,...
.
In 1942, Burt was elected President of the British Psychological Society and in 1946 became the first British psychologist to be knighted for his contributions to psychological testing and for making educational opportunities more widely available, according to an account by J. Philippe Rushton
J. Philippe Rushton
Jean Philippe Rushton is a Canadian psychology professor at the University of Western Ontario who is most widely known for his work on racial group differences, such as research on race and intelligence, race and crime, and the application of r/K selection theory to humans in his book Race,...
. Burt was a member of the London School of Differential Psychology
Individual differences psychology
The science of psychology studies people at three levels of focus captured by the well-known quotation: “Every man is in certain respects like all other men, like some other men, like no other man" ....
, and of the British Eugenics Society. Because he had suggested on radio in 1946 the formation of an organization for people with high IQ scores, he was made honorary president of Mensa
Mensa International
Mensa is the largest and oldest high-IQ society in the world. It is a non-profit organization open to people who score at the 98th percentile or higher on a standardised, supervised IQ or other approved intelligence test...
in 1960. He officially joined Mensa soon thereafter.
At age 68, Burt retired but continued writing articles and books. He died of cancer at age 88 in London on 10 October 1971.
"The Burt Affair"
Over the course of his career Burt published numerous articles and books on a host of topics ranging from psychometricsPsychometrics
Psychometrics is the field of study concerned with the theory and technique of psychological measurement, which includes the measurement of knowledge, abilities, attitudes, personality traits, and educational measurement...
to philosophy of science
Philosophy of science
The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...
to parapsychology
Parapsychology
The term parapsychology was coined in or around 1889 by philosopher Max Dessoir, and originates from para meaning "alongside", and psychology. The term was adopted by J.B. Rhine in the 1930s as a replacement for the term psychical research...
. It is his research in behavior genetics
Quantitative genetics
Quantitative genetics is the study of continuous traits and their underlying mechanisms. It is effectively an extension of simple Mendelian inheritance in that the combined effects of one or more genes and the environments in which they are expressed give rise to continuous distributions of...
, most notably in studying the heritability of intelligence (as measured in IQ tests) using twin studies
Twin study
Twin studies help disentangle the relative importance of environmental and genetic influences on individual traits and behaviors. Twin research is considered a key tool in behavioral genetics and related fields...
that have created the most controversy, frequently referred to as "the Burt Affair." Shortly after Burt died it had become known that all of his notes and records had been burnt, and he was accused of falsifying
Scientific misconduct
Scientific misconduct is the violation of the standard codes of scholarly conduct and ethical behavior in professional scientific research. A Lancet review on Handling of Scientific Misconduct in Scandinavian countries provides the following sample definitions: *Danish definition: "Intention or...
research data. The 2007 Encyclopædia Britannica
Encyclopædia Britannica
The Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...
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.
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
Leon Kamin
Leon J. Kamin is an American psychologist who chaired Princeton University's Department of Psychology in 1968....
(1974). 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.
In 1976, the London Sunday Times
The Sunday Times (UK)
The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...
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.
William H. Tucker
William H. Tucker
William H. Tucker is a professor of psychology at Rutgers University and the author of several books critical of race science.Tucker received his bachelor's degree from Bates College in 1967, and his master's and doctorate from Princeton University...
argued in a 1997 article that: "A comparison of his twin sample with that from other well documented studies, however, leaves little doubt that he committed fraud." Robert Joynson and Ronald Fletcher published books in support of Burt. Cambridge University Professor of Psychology Nicholas Mackintosh edited Cyril Burt: Fraud or Framed?, which was presented by the publisher as arguing that "his defenders have sometimes, but by no means always, been correct, and that his critics have often jumped to hasty conclusions."
Psychologists Arthur Jensen
Arthur Jensen
Arthur Robert Jensen is a Professor Emeritus of educational psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. Jensen is known for his work in psychometrics and differential psychology, which is concerned with how and why individuals differ behaviorally from one another.He is a major proponent...
and J. Philippe Rushton
J. Philippe Rushton
Jean Philippe Rushton is a Canadian psychology professor at the University of Western Ontario who is most widely known for his work on racial group differences, such as research on race and intelligence, race and crime, and the application of r/K selection theory to humans in his book Race,...
have pointed out that the controversial correlations reported by Burt are in line with the correlations found in subsequent twin studies. Rushton (1997) wrote that five different studies on twins reared apart by independent researchers corroborated Cyril Burt's findings and had given almost the same heritability estimate (average estimate 0.75 vs. 0.77 by Burt). Jensen has also argued that "[n]o one with any statistical sophistication, and Burt had plenty, would report exactly the same correlation, 0.77, three times in succession if he were trying to fake the data." W.D. Hamilton claimed in a 2000 book review that the claims made by his detractors in the so-called "Burt Affair" had been either wrong or grossly exaggerated.
According to Earl B. Hunt
Earl B. Hunt
Earl B. Hunt is an American psychologist specializing in the study of human and artificial intelligence. Within these fields he has focused on individual differences in intelligence and the implications of these differences for the roles people play within a high-technology society...
, it may never be found out whether Burt was intentionally fraudulent or merely careless. Noting that later studies of the heritability of IQ have produced results very similar to those of Burt's, Hunt argues that Burt did not harm science in the narrow sense of misleading scientists with false results, but that in the broader sense science in general and behavior genetics in particular were profoundly harmed by the Burt Affair, leading to an unjustified general rejection of genetic studies of intelligence and a drying up of funding for such studies.
Biographies
- Burt, C.L. (1949). An autobiographical sketch. Occupational Psychology, 23, 9-20.
- Fancher, R.E. (1985) The intelligence men: Makers of the I.Q. controversy. New York: Norton.
- Hearnshaw, L. (1979). Cyril Burt: Psychologist. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Also published London: Hodder and Stoughton, (1979).
- (1983) "Sir Cyril Burt". AEP (Association of Educational Psychologists) Journal, 6 (1) [Special issue]
- Scarr, S. (1994). "Burt, Cyril L.", in R.J. Sternberg (ed.), Encyclopedia of intelligence (Vol. 1, pp. 231–234). New York: Macmillan
.
Books by Burt
- Burt, C.L. (1921). Mental and scholastic tests London: P. S. King. Republished and revised (4th ed.). London: Staples, (1962).
- Burt, C.L. (1923). Handbook of tests for use in schools. London: P. S. King. Republished (2nd ed.) London: Staples, (1948).
- Burt, C.L. (1925). The young delinquent. London: University of London. Republished and revised (3rd ed.) London: University of London Press, (1938); (4th ed.) Bickley: University of London Press, (1944).
- Burt, C.L. (1930). Study of the Mind. London: BBC.
- Burt, C.L. (1935). The subnormal mind. London: Oxford University Press. Republished London: Oxford University Press, (1937).
- Burt, C.L. (1937). The Backward Child. London: University of London Press. Republished (5th ed.) London: University of London Press, (1961).
- Burt, C.L. (1940). The factors of the mind: An introduction to factor analysis in psychology. London: University of London.
- Burt, C.L. (1945). How the mind works. London : Allen & Unwin.
- Burt, C.L. (1946). Intelligence and fertility. London.
- Burt, C.L. (1957). The causes and treatments of backwardness (4th ed.). London: University of London.
- Burt, C.L. (1959). A psychological study of typography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Burt, C.L. (1975). The gifted child. New York: Wiley and London: Hodder and Stoughton
- Burt, C.L. (1975). ESP and psychology. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Edited by Anita Gregory.
Articles by Burt
- Burt, C.L. (1972). "Inheritance of general intelligence", American Psychologist, 27, 175-190.
- Burt, C.L. (1971). "Quantitative genetics in psychology", British Journal of Mathematical & Statistical Psychology, 24, 1-21
- Burt, C.L. (1963). Is Intelligence Distributed Normally?.
- Burt, C.L., & Williams, E.L. (1962). "The influence of motivation on the results of intelligence tests", British Journal of Statistical Psychology, 15, 129-135.
- Burt, C.L. (1961). "Factor analysis and its neurological basis", British Journal of Statistical Psychology, 14, 53-71.
- Burt, C.L. (1960). "The mentally subnormal", Medical World, 93, 297-300.
- Burt, C.L. (1959). "General ability and special aptitudes", Educational Research, 1, 3-16.
- Burt, C.L. (1959). "The Examination at Eleven Plus", British Journal of Education Studies, 7, 99-117.
- Burt, C.L., & Gregory, W.L. (1958). "Scientific method in psychology: II", British Journal of Statistical Psychology, 11, 105-128.
- Burt, C.L. (1958). "Definition and scientific method in psychology", British Journal of Statistical Psychology, 11, 31-69.
- Burt, C.L. (1958). "The inheritance of mental ability", American Psychologist, 13, 1-15.
Readings on the Burt Affair
- Steve BlinkhornSteve BlinkhornStephen F. Blinkhorn is a British occupational psychologist and psychometrician , who continues to contribute to psychology and psychometric testing....
(1989). "Was Burt Stitched Up?", Nature, 340:439, 1989. - Blinkhorn, S.F.Steve BlinkhornStephen F. Blinkhorn is a British occupational psychologist and psychometrician , who continues to contribute to psychology and psychometric testing....
(1995). "Burt and the early history of factor analysis", In N.J.Mackintosh, Cyril Burt: Fraud or Framed?. Oxford University Press. - C. Loring BraceC. Loring BraceC. Loring Brace is an anthropologist at the University of Michigan. He considers the attempt "to introduce a Darwinian outlook into biological anthropology" to be his greatest contribution to the field of anthropology.-Life and work:...
(2005). "Sir Cyril Burt: Scientific Fraud", In C. Loring Brace, Race is a Four Lettered Word, the Genesis of the Concept. Oxford University Press - Fletcher, R. (1991). Science, Ideology, and the Media. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction.
- Gould, S.J.Stephen Jay GouldStephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation....
(1996). The Mismeasure of ManThe Mismeasure of ManThe Mismeasure of Man , by Stephen Jay Gould, is a history and critique of the statistical methods and cultural motivations underlying biological determinism, the belief that “the social and economic differences between human groups — primarily races, classes, and sexes — arise from inherited,...
. (2nd ed.). - Hartley, James and Rooum, DonaldDonald RooumDonald Rooum is an English anarchist cartoonist and writer. He has a long association with Freedom Press who have published seven volumes of his Wildcat cartoons....
'Sir Cyril Burt and typography: a re-evaluation', British Journal of Psychology(1983) 74, 203-212 - Arthur R. Jensen, IQ and science: The mysterious Burt affair. In Mackintosh, Nicholas John (ed.), Cyril Burt : fraud or framed? (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 1-12. ISBN 019852336X.
- Joynson, R.B. (1989). The Burt Affair. New York: Routledge. ISBN 041501039X.
- Lamb, K. (1992). "Biased tidings: The media and the Cyril Burt controversy", Mankind Quarterly, 33, 203.
- Rowe, D., & Plomin, R. (1978). "The Burt controversy: The comparison of Burt's data on IQ with data from other studies", Behavior Genetics, 8, 81-83.
- Rushton, J.P.J. Philippe RushtonJean Philippe Rushton is a Canadian psychology professor at the University of Western Ontario who is most widely known for his work on racial group differences, such as research on race and intelligence, race and crime, and the application of r/K selection theory to humans in his book Race,...
(1994). "Victim of scientific hoax (Cyril Burt and the genetic IQ controversy)", Society, 31, 40-44. - Rushton, J.P.J. Philippe RushtonJean Philippe Rushton is a Canadian psychology professor at the University of Western Ontario who is most widely known for his work on racial group differences, such as research on race and intelligence, race and crime, and the application of r/K selection theory to humans in his book Race,...
(2002). "New evidence on Sir Cyril Burt: His 1964 speech to the Association of Educational Psychologists", Intelligence, 30, 555-567. - Tizard, J (1976). "Progress and Degeneration in the IQ debate:comments on Urbach", Br J Philos Sci, 27: 251-258
- Tucker, W. H. (1997). Re-reconsidering Burt: Beyond a reasonable doubt. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 33(2) 145-162.
- Woolridge, Adrian (1994). Measuring the mind : education and psychology in England, c.1860-c.1990. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
Primary sources
Archival collections related to Burt in the United Kingdom.- 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 http://www.bps.org.uk/hopc.
- 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) http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/.
- Imperial College, University of London, Archives and Corporate Records Unit holds Burt's correspondence with Herbert Dingle, 1951-1959 (Ref: H Dingle collection) http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/recordsandarchives.
- University College London (UCL), University of London, Special Collections holds letters from Burt to LS Penrose, (Ref: Penrose) http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Library/special-coll/.
External links
- Twin study
- Concise summary of Cyril Burt
- "Sir Cyril Burt." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007.
- The London School of Differential Psychology: Cyril L. Burt
- National Register of Archives.
- The Cyril Burt Archives at University of Liverpool Special Collections.
- The British Psychological Society History of Psychology Centre.
- Oxford University: Bodleian Library, Special Collections and Western Manuscripts
- University College London (UCL), University of London, Special Collections.
- Imperial College London Archives and Corporate Records.
- Likenesses of Burt in the National Portrait Gallery.