Cyril Burt: biography of this English psychologist and geneticist

The 20th century marked a very important advance for psychology thanks to different European and United States authors.

On this occasion we will review the life of one of the best-known English researchers through a biography of Cyril Burt. His contributions were involved in a series of controversies that we will discover throughout this article, in which we will go through the biography of said author.

• Related article: "History of Psychology: authors and main theories"

Short biography of Cyril Burt

Cyril Burt, whose full name was Cyril Lodowic Burt, was born in the year 1883 in London, United Kingdom. His father was Dr. Cyril Cecil Barrow Burt. The family moved to a small neighborhood in Stratford when Burt was a child. His father combined his training with a small business, a pharmacy, until he managed to become a doctor and went on to work at Westminster Hospital in London.

It was then that they moved to the capital and Cyril Burt received an education in one of the city's public schools. Working as a rural doctor, his father sometimes took Cyril with him to accompany him on the routes between different towns. So he could check how fast he learned. On some of these medical visits they passed by the house of Darwin Galton, brother of the famous

Sir Francis Galton.

These visits brought the work of one of the most important British authors in history closer to the young Cyril Burt, who I was increasingly attracted to the psychological discipline, being able to hear first-hand the ideas and knowledge of this genius. Especially he was struck by all of Francis Galton's research related to individual differences and statistical studies.

Cyril Burt's education continued, this time at King's School, now Warwick School, before completing his training at the prestigious Christ's Hospital boarding school. After that stage, The time came for him to go to university, and he did it at Oxford, specifically at Jesus College. Here he was trained in classical subjects and delved into both philosophy and psychology.

One of his mentors was none other than William McDougall, one of the leading figures in social psychology at the time. It was he who instructed him in psychometric issues so that Cyril Burt could start working on what would be his first psychological tests. McDougall trained a whole generation of important psychologists, since not only Burt stood out, but also figures such as May Smith, John Flügel or William Brown.

Career as an Educational Psychologist

Once graduated, He complemented this training with the diploma that enabled him to practice as a teacher. In addition, William McDougall summoned him to collaborate in an ambitious study that sought to produce national statistics on the mental and physical qualities of English citizens. Francis Galton himself was behind this idea, so in a way, he was able to work together with the two people who had influenced him the most.

It was by doing this research that Cyril Burt got to know the concept of eugenics in depth, which in turn led him to meet authors such as Karl Pearson and Charles Spearman, whose works would also influence Burt in the future. By 1908, he was already working as a professor of psychology at the University of Liverpool. in this institution he had the opportunity to collaborate with sir Charles Sherrington, eminent neurophysiologist and Nobel laureate.

cyril burt he began working on different tools to be able to measure variables such as intelligence and other aptitudes of children, and took for it the works on eugenics of Spearman, as a base. One of his works, published in 1909, established some rather controversial conclusions.

The study claimed that performance differences between children from upper-class families in private schools compared to children from more modest classes, which went to public schools, being superior for the first group, were due to genetic factors and therefore, were innate. This practically meant that rich people were naturally smarter than poor people.

• You may be interested in: "Charles Spearman: biography of this experimental psychologist"

London City Council psychologist

In 1913, Cyril Burt was hired by the London City Council itself as a psychologist, to apply his batteries testing different groups of children with the aim of discerning which of them had a disability intellectual. During this work, he continued to collaborate with Charles Spearmen and therefore draw on his studies on eugenics.

Likewise, he received help from members of the National Institute of Industrial Psychology, some of them as brilliant as the psychologist Winifred Raphael. Cyril Burt did his job as City Council psychologist for many years. In that time he published works such as Juvenile delinquency, a work that he triggered in the creation of the Center for the Clinical Guidance of Children, in the Islington district.

As of the year 1924, he combined his work for the City Council with another job as a professor of educational psychology at an institution called London Day Training College, acting in turn as a guide.

Stage at University College London and last years

But in 1931 he received such an important offer that it earned him to finish his stage in those two institutions, having spent almost two decades in the City Council. It was about leading the department of psychology at University College London, a position that until then was held by Charles Spearman himself, for which he became his successor.

Cyril Burt, in addition to the president of this section, also acted as a teacher. In fact, among his most eminent students are later personalities in the world of psychology as they are hans eysenck, Raymond Cattell, Chris Brand or Arthur Jensen.

Although Cyril Burt's career was based on statistical psychology, he also had some exposure to the field of psychoanalysis, a fact that is observed when verifying that he collaborated with the Tavistock clinic, of this cut, in addition to the British Society of Psychoanalysis.

Cyril Burt's reputation continued to grow, and in 1942 he became the president of the British Psychological Society. Just four years later, he received the distinction of sir, the first psychologist to receive the honor. This was a recognition of all his contributions and his usefulness in the educational world, helping all children have easier access to education.

In 1951, he decided to end his professional stage and retired. He lived for another two decades, enjoying retirement and publishing new works, until he finally ended his days in 1971, when he was 88 years old. His cause of death was cancer.

the burt case

Cyril Burt's death did not make his figure into oblivion, far from it. Shortly after, his name began to sound again, and not for the better, in what became known as the Burt case. It all started after reviewing some of this author's work in which he investigated cases of identical twins. and how intelligence was inherited.

However, it was discovered that the records about it had been destroyed by Cyril Burt himself. This fact, together with a series of inconsistencies in the studies, which came to light through the investigations by Leon Kamin and Oliver Gillie, unleashed a whole earthquake around the publications Burt's.

It was concluded that much of the data used had been deliberately fabricated to support the hypotheses. That is to say, these authors claimed that Cyril Burt had falsified data in some of his research. Leslie Hearnshaw, the person who wrote his memoirs and who was also very close to him, suggested that Burt's work after 1945 lacked sufficient reliability.

Bill Tucker, another psychologist, when comparing the results of Cyril Burt's work with those of other similar work on twins, concluded that, indeed, the results had to be falsified. However, other professionals, in this case, J. Philippe Rushton and Arthur Jensen did believe that Burt's work was reliable, but the investigations of these same authors were also called into question.

earl b. Hunt finds it difficult to conclude whether Cyril Burt's action was deliberate or rather due to unconscious flaws in the way he proceeded. In any case, he claims that the damage this scandal did to the reputation of the science of genetics was enormous and resulted in a huge loss of research grants that inevitably postponed many discoveries important.

Bibliographic references:

• Fletcher, R. (1991). Science, ideology, and the media: The Cyril Burt scandal. Transaction Publishers.
• Gieryn, T.F., Figert, A.E. (1986). Scientists protect their cognitive authority: The status degradation ceremony of Sir Cyril Burt. The knowledge society. Springer.
• Jensen, A.R. (1972). Sir Cyril Burt (1883–1971). Psychometrica. Springer.
• Joyson, R. b. (1989). The Burt affair. Taylor & Frances/Routledge.
• Samelson, F. (1992). Rescuing the reputation of Sir Cyril Burt. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences.