Cyril Burt

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Cyril Burt, 1930

Sir Cyril Lodowic Burt (born March 3, 1883 in Westminster , † October 10, 1971 in London ) was a British psychologist .

Life

Burt studied from 1902 to 1907 natural sciences and psychology in Oxford under William McDougall and in 1908 in Würzburg under Oswald Külpe . In 1908 he received a lectureship in experimental psychology and physiology at the University of Liverpool under Sir Charles Sherrington . In 1913 he became the first school psychologist worldwide to serve in the London County Council (LCC) at the school inspectorate.

From 1924 to 1931 he was Professor of Educational Psychology at the London Day Training College (Institute for Education) at the University of London . From 1931 to 1951 he was the successor to Charles Spearman Professor of Psychology at University College London . In retirement he is said to have made over 200 publications. His students include Hans Jürgen Eysenck , Raymond Bernard Cattell and Arthur Jensen . In the late 1960s, Cyril Burt was also President of Mensa International , an association whose members are above the 98th percentile on intelligence tests. In 1950 he became a member ( fellow ) of the British Academy .

subjects

In addition to his half-day work as a school psychologist, he was able to pursue scientific activities. He collected the data of many students, which flowed into his intelligence research. His research and beliefs were incorporated into the school structure in England (assignment to special schools, Eleven-Plus testing program). For this contribution he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor ("Sir") in 1946 . Burt founded educational psychology in the UK. At the same time he researched the inheritance of intelligence and personality traits and used twin research for this purpose . Burt showed that the IQs of identical twins were more closely correlated than those of dizygoti. Burt deduced from this that intelligence is inherited , while the milieu has only little influence on intelligence. He played a major role in the development of the factor analysis. He also conducted research on personality factors, environmental influences on behavior and juvenile criminals.

The Burt Affair

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Burt was considered a highly respected scientist when he died in 1971. In 1974, doubts first arose about his data ( Leon Kamin , Arthur Jensen ), which pointed to the extremely unlikely occurrence of identical correlation coefficients (r = 0.771) for the intelligence of identical twins in several of his studies. Other researchers, so u. a. Arthur Jensen, however, point out that Burt, who had extensive experience in the field of empirical research, would hardly have invented the same correlation coefficient in three consecutive studies if he had had fraudulent intent. Furthermore, doubts were raised about the existence of two co-authors.

Another indication that Burt falsified data is the fact that the data in question could not be found in Burt's estate. Added to this was the fact that in a study published in 1966, Burt looked at a strikingly high number of identical but separately raised twins, namely 53 pairs. Although this high number is still believed to be within the realm of possibility, a 2006 study concluded that the other limiting factors Burt identified made it at least highly unlikely that he would find the majority of the twins through personal contact had done as he claimed.

In the field of educational psychology in particular, many researchers assume that Burt's work was falsified . Other researchers, including friends of Burt, such as Joynson (1989) or Jensen, tried to show that some of the apparent irregularities were due to inaccurate research.

Works (selection)

literature

  • Ronald Fletcher: Science, Ideology, and the Media: The Cyril Burt Scandal. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick (NJ) 1991, ISBN 0-88738-376-9
  • Oliver Gillie: Crucial Data Was Faked by Eminent Psychologist. In: London Sunday Times. London, October 24, 1976, p. 1
  • Stephen Jay Gould : The Mismeasure of Man 1996, ISBN 0-393-31425-1
  • Leslie Spencer Hearnshaw: Cyril Burt: Psychologist. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) 1979, ISBN 0-8014-1244-7
  • LS Hearnshaw: Cyril Lodowic Burt, 1883-1971 . In: Proceedings of the British Academy . tape 58 , 1974, pp. 475-492 ( thebritishacademy.ac.uk [PDF]).
  • Robert B. Joynson: The Burt Affair. Routledge, New York 1989, ISBN 0-415-01039-X
  • Leon J. Kamin: The Science and Politics of IQ . Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Potomac (MD) 1974, ISBN 0-14-080932-5
  • Kevin Lamb: Biased Tidings: The Media and the Cyril Burt Controversy. In: Mankind Quarterly. Volume 33, January 1, 1992, pp. 203ff
  • David Rowe, Robert Plomin: The Burt Controversy: The Comparison of Burt's Data on IQ with Data from Other Studies. In: Behavior Genetics. Volume 8, 1978, pp. 81-83
  • Nicholas J. Mackintosh (Ed.): Cyril Burt: fraud or framed? Oxford University Press, Oxford 1995, ISBN 0-19-852336-X
  • J. Philippe Rushton: New Evidence on Sir Cyril Burt: His 1964 Speech to the Association of Educational Psychologists. In: Intelligence. Volume 30, 2002, pp. 555-567

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed May 11, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Burbridge: Burt's twins: A question of numbers . In: Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences , Volume 42, No. 4, pp. 335-352, 2006, abstract online
  3. ↑ Burt actually forged data. In: Psychologie heute, No. 1, 1979
personal data
SURNAME Burt, Cyril
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Burt, Sir Cyril Lodowic
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British psychologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 3, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Westminster
DATE OF DEATH October 10, 1971
Place of death London