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A Review of `Cyril Burt: fraud or framed?' Edited by N. J. Mackintosh. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1995
Following what appeared to be an excellently written biography by Hearnshaw (1979), it became conventional wisdom that Sir Cyril Burt had committed scientific fraud by falsifying some extremely important sets of data. Most significantly, these related to estimates of the heritability of intelligence obtained by studying pairs of twins, reared together and apart and, in some cases, in widely different family environments. Hearnshaw also accused Burt of several other malpractices, including making an exaggerated claim for his primacy in the development of modern factor analysis. The book came as a bombshell to psychologists in the UK since Burt enjoyed an enormous academic reputation and had been widely regarded as the most influential educational psychologist of his generation. But Burt's twin data had been controversial for many years: in fact, one of his supporters, Jensen (1974), had concluded that they contained so many errors that they were virtually useless for research purposes.
The British Psychological Society accepted the charges made in the Hearnshaw book and made a number of recommendations which would, under normal circumstances, have sounded the death knell for Burt's reputation. However, many of Burt's former friends, past students and colleagues were unconvinced of his guilt, although they were not able to mount anything in the way of a systematic defence, either in the British Psychological Society or the technical literature. It was left, therefore, to two uncommitted academics, Dr Joynson (1989) and Professor Fletcher (1991) to attempt the partial, if not total, rehabilitation of Burt.
Working completely independently and unknown to each other, Joynson and Fletcher produced well-researched and thoughtful books which cast major doubts upon the accuracy of the Hearnshaw biography and questioned the motivations and conduct of many of Burt's critics. Their work was sufficiently persuasive to attract a preponderance of favourable reviews and also to provoke a demand, from what might be termed the pro-Burtian faction, for an official review by the British Psychological Society. For a number of reasons this was declined, but the Society did produce a formal procedure for dealing with major complaints against members, with the implication that its actions in the case of Burt were unsatisfactory....