From: roger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Was Burt Stitched Up?
Keywords: Sir Cyril Burt, accusations of "fraud".
Date: 13 Apr 92 19:13:22 GMT
Organization: Princeton University
Originator: news@ernie.Princeton.EDU

In article <1992Apr13.112938.26694@newcastle.ac.uk> 
w.p.coyne@newcastle.ac.uk writes:
>sheaffer@netcom.com (Robert Sheaffer) writes:
>>        A  few  weeks  ago,  I replied to a  post  about  the  supposedly
>>        'fraudulent  and discredited work of Cyril Burt on the  heridita-

>could you send me a copy of your article or repost it to the net if you
>still have a copy.

>>        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)

>>        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)

>>             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 ...

>And I would expect the strongest support for Burt 
>came from right wingers looking
>for justifications to support the status quo.  The fact that people of 
>either persuasion supported one side or the other should not stop us 
>looking at the evidence being provided for the theories of inheritence 
>vs. environment.

Indeed.  Note that the "left-wingers are behind it all" arguments began
immediately upon the scandal breaking.  Gould reports that Eysenck wrote
to Burt's widow that it was all a commie plot, or words to that effect.

Suffice it to say that the above sereotype does not describe Gould, who
carefully worked over Burt's career, looking at far more than the
falsifications toward the end of his life.  Gould is not a "vehement
environmentalist" by any means.  As for the "no single trait
identifiable as intelligence", only a few remaining faithful from
Spearman's camp (not including Spearman, btw, who rejected the idea
himself in his last book) still claim that there is.  

>>        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."

Alas, you can.  Burt lied and dissembled (and made huge errors, too) all
thhrough his career.  He published letters in support of himself under
pseudonyms.  He tried to rewrite the history of statistics to exclude
Spearman's invention of factor analysis.  And on and on.

>Stephen Jay Gould's 'The Mismeasure of Man' goes into quite a bit of detail
>on the theory Burt supported.  Gould seems to me to present a very good
>case that the factor analysis used by Burt was no good.  Whether or not 
>Burt made up his data Gould argues that the data itself is no good - in the
>sense that it CANNOT be used to support a hereditarian viewpoint.  the data
>neiter supports or disproves the heriditarian or environmentalist viewpoints.

Exactly.  Even if Burt's twin-study data turns out to have been good
after all, which (imho) would require a minor miracle, it would not
support his conclusions, and the article on which all of his other work
seems to rest, the 1909 two-schools experiment, would still be a morass
of wishful thinking and circular reasoning.

Roger
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic