From: sheaffer@netcom.com (Robert Sheaffer)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Was Burt Stitched Up?
Keywords: Sir Cyril Burt, accusations of "fraud".
Date: 8 Apr 92 22:00:22 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest)


        A  few  weeks  ago,  I replied to a  post  about  the  supposedly
        'fraudulent  and discredited work of Cyril Burt on the  heridita-
        bility of intelligence' by noting that I'd seen a review of a new
        book claiming to exonerate Burt. It turns out that there are  two
        such books, and the British Psychological Society is  reconsider-
        ing its censure of Burt. Some excerpts:


        From "Nature", Vol. 340, p. 439 (10 August, 1989):

                    Was Burt stitched up?, by Steve Blinkhorn

        (a  review of "The Burt Affair" by Robert B. Joynson,  Routledge,
              1989)

             It  is  hard  to imagine a project less  likely  to  attract
             universal  enthusiasm  in the world of  academic  psychology
             than  an  exculpatory account of the Burt affair  ...  until
             Robert Joynson accidentally came across an inconsistency  in
             the  case  for the prosecution that had  never  really  been
             followed  through. The tale he tells in his account  of  the
             Burt  affair is no less salutary than the original  scandal.
             It has radically shifted my view of the matter ... It  seems
             to me that verdict was pronounced, then more evidence sought
             or  reinterpreted in support of that verdict. If Joynson  is
             correct,  then  an  injustice  has  been  done,  and  Burt's
             accusers are guilty of selective reporting and misreporting.

             ...  The articles Burt is supposed to have  published  under
             the  names of A.D.B. Clarke and Ann Gravely (later  Clarke),
             for  instance,  turn out to be clearly  labelled  as  thesis
             abstracts ...


        From "Nature" Vol. 352, p. 120 (11 July, 1991)

                     "Raking over the coals" by Lee Lovinger

        (a  review of "Science, Ideology, and the Media: The  Cyril  Burt
        Scandal" by Ronald Fletcher, Transaction Publishers, 1991)

             A  legend of modern science is the Cyril Burt scandal  -  an
             eminent  scientist  posthumously  charged  with  fabricating
             data.  Ronald  Fletcher  now says the charge  is  untrue:  a
             specious  product of politics and publicity  intruding  into
             science  ... Strongly opposed to Burt's position were  those
             who  contended  that mental abilities  were  environmentally
             determined,  that IQ tests and other heriditarian data  were
             unreliable,  and  that  there was  really  no  single  trait
             identifiable as intelligence. The most vehement  environmen-
             talists  were  left-wing egalitarians who  accused  Burt  of
             justifying class distinctions ...

             ...  the  fraud  charge  rests  entirely  on  circumstantial
             evidence ... the invariant data appears in papers  published
             up  to 1966, five years before Burt's death, but  the  fraud
             charges were not made until five years after his death,  and
             then by a journalist seeking a sensational story. The charge
             of  nonexistence  of lady assistants, featured  in  Gillie's
             story, is disproved both by the testimony of those who  knew
             the  women  and  by written records ... On the  basis  of  a
             detailed  analysis,  Fletcher  finds  the  only   suspicious
             invariant correlation to be the repetition in 1966 of  0.771
             first found in 1955. But in 1966 Burt was 82 years old, with
             declining  powers of concentration, doing all  his  calcula-
             tions  by  hand ... several subsequent  independent  studies
             gave  the same results as those of Burt. (The  most  recent,
             the  Minnesota  Twin Study, was published in  "Science",  12
             October   1991,  too  late  for  inclusion   in   Fletcher's
             book.) ... [1990? - RS]

             A   fair  appraisal  of  all  the  circumstantial   evidence
             presented  by Fletcher compels the conclusion that Burt  was
             eccentric  and sometimes careless, but was guilty of  heresy
             rather than fraud ...


        From "Nature", Vol. 354 p. 97 (14 November 1991):

                     "Burt files reopened" by Peter Aldhous

             Under  pressure  from  ten  of  its  fellows,  the   British
             Psychological  Society  is  reconsidering  its  1980  public
             discrediting of Sir Cyril Burt, the author of  controversial
             publications   on   the  inheritance  of   intelligence   in
             children ...

             Bill  Wald,  a retired child psychologist who  has  led  the
             campaign   within  the  British  Psychological  Society   to
             reinstate Burt, argues that the discrediting was politically
             motivated,  coming  from psychologists  who  opposed  Burt's
             ideas  on the inheritance of intelligence. On the  basis  of
             the  latest evidence, "you can disagree with Burt,  but  you
             can't say that he was a fraud."
-- 
  
        Robert Sheaffer - Scepticus Maximus - sheaffer@netcom.com
  
 Past Chairman, The Bay Area Skeptics - for whom I speak only when authorized!

     "In the 1970's the world will undergo famines - hundreds of millions
     of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs 
     embarked upon now ... in 1985, when it is calculated [under the most
     optimistic scenario] that the major die-back will be over, ..."
       
                       Dr. Paul Ehrlich, "The Population Bomb," 1968