It is good to see Clive Turner’s article in the Newsletter for September 1991, on the late Sir Cyril Burt, whose reputation appeared to have been destroyed by an article headed "Crucial data faked by eminent psychologist" in the Sunday Times on 29 November 1978. In this Burt was accused of having fabricated and falsified his data on intelligence testing, to provide evidence for the genetical inheritance of educability, which he believed would be little affected by environmental conditions. And the late Professor L S Hearnshaw, in his authorised biography Cyril Burt Psychologist (1979), gave weighty support to the charges of fraud.
Burt, as a "hereditarian", supported the selective system of education, with entry to grammar schools controlled by the 11+ examination. Towards the end of his life, however, this was being increasingly rejected as elitist by progressive educationists, almost all of whom were "environmentalists" believing that any differences in children’s school performance were due to environmental rather than genetical factors, so that those who were lagging behind could be brought up to the level of the rest by appropriate changes in their upbringing. They were therefore only too happy to accept that Burt had been a fraud all along and in 1980, taking his guilt for granted, the British Psychological Society organised a special symposium "in which Burt’s deceptions should be seen in the wider context of scientific method in Psychology", this being received with acclamation. Since then there have been several books (e.g. Betrayers of the Truth by W J Broad and N Wade, 1982, and False Prophets by A KoIm, 1986) in which Burt is pilloried as among the worst of the offenders.
But, as Mr Turner points out in his article, things now look rather different since the publication in 1986 of The Burt Affair by Robert Joynson who, having examined the evidence in meticulous detail, concluded that much of it was unacceptable, either plainly wrong or based on misunderstandings of Burt’s admittedly muddled writings in his old age. It may be too soon to claim that he has been completely rehabilitated, but Joynson has at least made out a prima facie case for the matter to be looked into again.
In the Guardian on 9 July Dr Clare Burstall, Director of the National Foundation for Educational Research, suggested that this might best be done by the British Psychological Society. But, although it would be greatly to the credit of the Society if they were now to urge that the matter should be re-opened, they are hardly the appropriate body to conduct an impartial inquiry into a matter on which they themselves are, or anyway were, very much parti pris. This might better be done, as I suggested in the Oxford Magazine last May, by the British Academy of which Burt was for many years a Fellow. The charges are so serious that had they been substantiated in his lifetime, he would almost certainly have been expelled from the Academy, which should therefore have a proper interest in finding out whether they are in fact true. It is not a question of the correctness of Burt’s hereditarian views on education, but whether he supported them by fraud and fabrication. There are many fellows of the British Academy well able to judge on such matters, which requires no expertise in educational psychology, and a small group of them could be asked to examine the evidence and to report back as to whether these charges of dishonesty do still hold water.
Although to ascertain whether or not a posthumous injustice has been done to the reputation of one of their more distinguished Fellows is reason enough for the British Academy to set up such an inquiry, there is in fact more to it than that. The questions raised by Burt are important ones, with important practical implications for educational policy, and this is in danger of being obscured by the apparent discrediting of his work. But that does not dispose of the hereditarian conclusion that some significant component of intelligence and educability is genetically inherited, resulting in individual differences which cannot be eliminated simply by manipulating the social and educational environment. That would not be regarded as politically correct in some circles, which perhaps explains the enthusiasm with which Burt’s apparent disgrace was originally greeted. But, whether or not his own work is still to be regarded as unacceptable, it is now independently supported by other research results.
C B Goodhart
Gonville and Caius College
Cambridge