In the memory of Sir Cyril Lodowic Burt

Abstract

In Britain, the tests on Intelligence Quotient (IQ) were first popularized by Sir Cyril Lodowic Burt (3 March 1883 – 10 October 1971), an educational psychologist and one of those responsible for devising the 11-plus. Burt claimed his 40 years of research proved a child's intelligence was mainly inherited from its parents and that social circumstances played only a minor role. His research formed the basis of education policy for half a century-from the 1920s until the 1970s. Yet only a year after his death in 1971, evidence began to emerge that Burt was a fraudster who had simply invented results to fit his theories about the hereditability of intelligence. Sir Cyril Lodowic Burt (3 March 1883 – 10 October 1971) was an English educational psychologist who made contributions to educational psychology and statistics. Burt is known for his studies on the heritability of IQ. Until the death of Burt in 1971, the British educational psychologist Sir Cyril Burt was viewed as one of the most significant and influential educational psychologists of his time. Within a year of death of Burt, however, the legitimacy of his research was being questioned. The questions began to turn into accusations, and by 1976 he was officially accused of fabricating data for the purpose to prove that intelligence was inherited.