Cyril Burt: Biography Of This English Psychologist And Geneticist
The 20th century represented a very important advance for psychology thanks to different European and American 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 explore the biography of said author.
Cyril Burt, whose full name was Cyril Lodowic Burt, was born in 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 to work at Westminster Hospital in London.
It was then that they moved to the capital and Cyril Burt received his education in one of the city’s public schools. Working as a rural doctor, his father sometimes took Cyril to accompany him on routes between different towns. So he could see how quickly 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 to the young Cyril Burt, who was increasingly attracted to the psychological discipline, being able to hear first-hand the ideas and knowledge of this genius. Especially All of Francis Galton’s research related to individual differences and statistical studies caught his attention
Cyril Burt’s education continued, this time at King’s School, which is now Warwick School, before completing his training at the prestigious Christ’s Hospital boarding school. Once that stage is over, The time came to enter university, and he did so at Oxford, specifically at Jesus College Here he had training in classical subjects and delved into both philosophy and psychology.
One of his mentors was none other than William McDougall, one of the social psychology figures of the time. It was he who instructed him in psychometric issues so that Cyril Burt could begin to work on what would be his first psychological tests. McDougall trained an entire generation of important psychologists, as not only Burt stood out, but also figures such as May Smith, John Flügel and William Brown.
Once licensed, He complemented this training with the diploma that enabled him to practice as a teacher Furthermore, William McDougall summoned him to collaborate on an ambitious study that sought to compile national statistics on the mental and physical qualities of English citizens. Francis Galton himself was behind this idea, so in some way, he was able to work alongside the two people who had influenced him the most.
It was by carrying out this research that Cyril Burt learned in depth about the concept of eugenics, which in turn led him to meet authors such as Karl Pearson and Charles Spearman, whose works would also be an influence on Burt in the future. By 1908, he was already working teaching psychology at the University of Liverpool. In this institution had the opportunity to collaborate with Sir Charles Sherrington eminent neurophysiologist and Nobel Prize winner.
Cyril Burt began working on different tools to be able to measure variables such as intelligence and other children’s abilities, and took Spearman’s work on eugenics as a basis. One of his works, published in 1909, established some rather controversial conclusions.
The study stated that the differences in performance between children from upper class families, in private schools, compared to those of children from more modest classes, who went to public schools, being higher for the first group, were due to genetic factors and therefore, they were innate. This meant, practically, that rich people were naturally more intelligent than poor people.
London City Council Psychologist
In 1913, Cyril Burt was hired by the London City Council as a psychologist, to apply his batteries of tests to different groups of children with the aim of discerning which of them had an intellectual disability. During this work, He continued to collaborate with Charles Spearmen and therefore draw on his studies on eugenics
Likewise, he received the help of members of the National Institute of Industrial Psychology, some of them as brilliant as the psychologist Winifred Raphael. Cyril Burt served as City Hall psychologist for many years. At that time he published works such as Juvenile Delinquency, a work that led to the creation of the Center for the Clinical Guidance of Children, in the district of Islington.
Starting in 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 counselor.
Stage at University College London and recent years
But in 1931 he received an offer so important that it allowed him to end his time in those two institutions, spending almost two decades at the City Council. It was about leading the psychology department at University College London, a position that until then was held by Charles Spearman himself, so he became his successor.
Cyril Burt, in addition to the president of this section, also acted as a professor. In fact, Among his most eminent students are later personalities in the world of psychology such as Hans Eysenck, Raymond Cattell, Chris Brand or Arthur Jensen.
Although Cyril Burt’s career was based on statistical psychology, he also had some approaches to the field of psychoanalysis, a fact that can be seen when verifying that he collaborated with the Tavistock clinic, of this type, in addition to the British Society of Psychoanalysis.
Cyril Burt’s reputation continued to grow, and In 1942 he became president of the British Psychological Society Only four years later, he received the distinction of sir, being the first psychologist to obtain this 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 career and retired. He lived two more decades, enjoying retirement and publishing new works, until he finally ended his days in 1971, when he was 88 years old. The cause of his death was cancer.
The death of Cyril Burt did not cause his figure to fall into oblivion, far from it. Shortly after, his name began to be heard again, and not for the better, in what became known as the Burt case. It all started after reviewing some of this author’s works in which he investigated cases of identical twins and how intelligence was inherited.
However, it was discovered that the records regarding 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 of Leon Kamin and Oliver Gillie, triggered an entire earthquake around Burt’s publications.
It was concluded that much of the data used had been fabricated expressly to support the proposed 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 from 1945 onwards lacked sufficient reliability.
Bill Tucker, another psychologist, when comparing the results of Cyril Burt’s work with those of other similar works 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 research of these same authors was also called into question.
Earl B. Hunt believes that it is difficult to conclude whether Cyril Burt’s actions were deliberate or rather due to unconscious defects 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 important discoveries.
