Notes

At the time of his death in October of 1971, Cyril Burt was viewed as a esteemed and influential member of his profession. Within months of his death however, the Princeton psychologist Leon Kamin recognized and reported a number of flaws in Burt's research--particularly his research involving monozygotic twins who were reared apart. Although Kamin suspected the data were fraudulent, he did not immediately make a public condemnation of Burt's research; he simply concluded that the data were not worthy of scientific consideration. In 1974, Kamin published The Science and Politics of IQ, which denounced the hereditarian position and contained much criticism of Burt's work with monozygotic twins. Shortly before Kamin published his book, another American psychologist, Arthur Jensen, published a paper which also found fault with Burt's data. Ironically, Jensen was in favor of the hereditarian position. It is interesting that two researchers with radically different professional agendas independently arrived at many of the same conclusions.

The first formal, public accusation of fraud against Cyril Burt came in 1976 from Dr. Oliver Gillie, the medical correspondent to the London Sunday Times. Gillie became suspicious of Burt's work after he read Kamin's The Science and Politics of IQ, and began to investigate. He set out to find two of Burt's research assistants: Miss Margaret Howard and Miss Jane Conway. Despite a thorough search, he was unable to locate either, and was forced to conclude that they were fictitious names. This fact, in conjunction with other findings, led Gillie to conclude that Burt had falsified his data. The article which appeared on the front page of the October 24, 1976 edition of the Times began with these lines