The Research Misconduct of Sir Cyril Burt
Vrinda Khirwadkar, vkhrwdkr@memphis.edu
September 27, 2017
This case study is about Sir Cyril Burt, who was one of the renowned British psychologist. He was an educational psychologist and Statistician was awarded the Thorndike Prize by the American Psychological Society few years before his death. He developed IQ testing and statistical methods for the genetic analysis of intelligence. He was accused of fabricating false data to support the theory that human intelligence is 75% inherent. His theory was questioned by Leslie Hearn- shaw, his ocial biographer and concluded most of Burt's data were not based on experiments. He mentioned that estimates were based on home background and intelligence made …show more content…
In 1913 he established that girls and boys are same in general intelli- gence With his success , he was named as Professor and Chair of Psychology at
University College, London in 1931 and eventually elected as President of the
British Psychological Society. Burts research on factor analysis was taking a new path on Psychology eld. His most famous work involved the study of monozy- gotic twins who were raised apart and concluded heredity plays signi cant role in the development of intellectual ability. A correlation coecient was the param- eter to judge the intelligence between the two and a good correlation coecient would indicate that the twins had similar intelligence scores. The study was car- ried over a twin and the coecient came out to be 0.77. He published a series of papers between 1943 and 1966 to conclude his theory of intellectual ability. His acclaimed reputation was a great impact on educational and academic commu- nity. He conducted eleven plus examination in England and according to their performance divided the students into two di erent levels of academic schools.
In 1946, he suggested to form an organization for people with high IQ Scores.
Also, few evidences of his research claimed to be done by his co-workers …show more content…
In 1972 , Leon Kamin, a Princeton University psychologist looked close to his papers and noticed a number of irregularities in it. There was a lack of information regarding methodologies he adopted such as the the types of tests used , sex of the children tested and signi cant results.
With addition to more number of twins, the correlation coecient came out to be a constant. He also concluded that the results left behind by Professor
Burt are not worthy of our scienti c attention. He did not make any public statement about his work, rather he published "The Science and Politics of IQ", which criticized the hereditary theory. In 1976, the rst ocial accusation was made by Dr. Oliver Gillie in London Sunday times. He aimed to nd two of his research assistants, Miss Margaret Howard and Miss Jane Conway but eventually unable to locate either. He was compelled to make a conclusion that they would have been ctitious names. In 1997, William H. Tucker compared Burts twin samples with data from other well documented studies and commented that there was little doubt that Burt committed fraud. However, there were studies by Joynson and Fletcher who claimed that one of his co-workers had existed.
Vrinda Khirwadkar, vkhrwdkr@memphis.edu
September 27, 2017
This case study is about Sir Cyril Burt, who was one of the renowned British psychologist. He was an educational psychologist and Statistician was awarded the Thorndike Prize by the American Psychological Society few years before his death. He developed IQ testing and statistical methods for the genetic analysis of intelligence. He was accused of fabricating false data to support the theory that human intelligence is 75% inherent. His theory was questioned by Leslie Hearn- shaw, his ocial biographer and concluded most of Burt's data were not based on experiments. He mentioned that estimates were based on home background and intelligence made …show more content…
In 1913 he established that girls and boys are same in general intelli- gence With his success , he was named as Professor and Chair of Psychology at
University College, London in 1931 and eventually elected as President of the
British Psychological Society. Burts research on factor analysis was taking a new path on Psychology eld. His most famous work involved the study of monozy- gotic twins who were raised apart and concluded heredity plays signi cant role in the development of intellectual ability. A correlation coecient was the param- eter to judge the intelligence between the two and a good correlation coecient would indicate that the twins had similar intelligence scores. The study was car- ried over a twin and the coecient came out to be 0.77. He published a series of papers between 1943 and 1966 to conclude his theory of intellectual ability. His acclaimed reputation was a great impact on educational and academic commu- nity. He conducted eleven plus examination in England and according to their performance divided the students into two di erent levels of academic schools.
In 1946, he suggested to form an organization for people with high IQ Scores.
Also, few evidences of his research claimed to be done by his co-workers …show more content…
In 1972 , Leon Kamin, a Princeton University psychologist looked close to his papers and noticed a number of irregularities in it. There was a lack of information regarding methodologies he adopted such as the the types of tests used , sex of the children tested and signi cant results.
With addition to more number of twins, the correlation coecient came out to be a constant. He also concluded that the results left behind by Professor
Burt are not worthy of our scienti c attention. He did not make any public statement about his work, rather he published "The Science and Politics of IQ", which criticized the hereditary theory. In 1976, the rst ocial accusation was made by Dr. Oliver Gillie in London Sunday times. He aimed to nd two of his research assistants, Miss Margaret Howard and Miss Jane Conway but eventually unable to locate either. He was compelled to make a conclusion that they would have been ctitious names. In 1997, William H. Tucker compared Burts twin samples with data from other well documented studies and commented that there was little doubt that Burt committed fraud. However, there were studies by Joynson and Fletcher who claimed that one of his co-workers had existed.