Cyril Burt

Cyril Burt Lodowic ( born March 3, 1883 in Westminster, † October 10, 1971 ) was a British psychologist.

Life

Burt studied 1902-1907 Natural Sciences and Psychology at Oxford under William McDougall and 1908 in Würzburg under Oswald Külpe. In 1908 he received a professorship of Experimental Psychology and Physiology at the University of Liverpool under Sir Charles Sherrington. In 1913 he joined the first school psychologist world to his service in the London County Council ( LCC) in the School Inspectorate.

From 1924 to 1931 he was Professor of Educational Psychology at the London Day Training College ( Institute of Education ), University of London. 1931-1951 he was then as successor to Charles Spearman Professor of Psychology at University College London. In retirement, he should have made ​​more than 200 publications. His students include Hans Jürgen Eysenck, Raymond Bernard Cattell and Arthur Jensen. In the late 1960s, Cyril Burt was also president of Mensa International, an association whose members are intelligence tests, above the 98th percentile.

Topics

In addition to his part-time work as a school psychologist, he was able to pursue scientific activities. He collected data from many students that went into his intelligence research. His research and beliefs influenced the structure of schools in England one ( assignment to special schools, Eleven -Plus testing program). For this post, he was knighted in 1946. Burt founded the educational psychology in the UK. At the same time, he conducted research on the heritability of intelligence and personality traits and used to the twin research. Burt showed that the IQs of identical twins more strongly correlated than in dizygotic. Burt deduced from the fact that intelligence bequeath, while the environment have only minor influence on the intelligence. He has partaken substantially to the definition of the factor analysis. He also conducted research on personality factors, milieu influences on behavior and juvenile criminals.

The " Burt Affair "

Burt was considered a highly respected scientist, as he died in 1971. 1974 came first doubts about his data ( Leon fireplace, Arthur Jensen ), the same on the extremely unlikely occurrence correlation coefficient ( r = 0.771 ) for the intelligence of identical twins in several of his studies referenced. Other researchers, as, inter alia, Arthur Jensen, however, point out that Burt, who had extensive experience in the area of ​​empirical research, would hardly have invented three consecutive trials the same correlation coefficient, when he was pursuing fraudulent intentions. Further doubts about the existence of two co-authors were collected. This could, however, both be identified later.

As a further indication that Burt had falsified data, the fact is considered that there could not be found that data in Burt's estate. Added to this was the fact that Burt in a study published in 1966, a remarkably high number of identical, but separate grown up twins looked at, namely 53 pairs. Although this high figure will be adopted as the realm of possibility, a study from 2006 concluded that the additional limiting factors, which established Burt, at least make it highly unlikely that he would find the majority of the twins on personal contact had made, as he claimed.

Especially in the field of educational psychology, many researchers go counterfeiting in Burt's work of researchers from this region of the psychology often represent views which conflict with Burts. Other researchers, including friends Burts how Joynson (1989 ) or Jensen tried to show that some of the apparent irregularities were due to " inaccurate research ". At Burt's favor is also pointed out that later studies Burts results support so that the motivations for any data tampering is unclear.

Works

  • The Young Delinquent. 1925
  • The Subnormal Mind. 1935
  • The Factors of the Mind: An Introduction to Factor Analysis in Psychology. 1940
  • Intelligence and fertility. 1946
  • The Causes and Treatments of Backward Ness. 1957
  • Mental and Scholastic Tests. 1962
  • The Gifted Child. 1975
City of Westminster William McDougall (psychologist) County of London Twin study Intelligence quotient Integrated Authority File
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