The Burt Affair

Few reputations had undergone so dramatic a reversal as that of the late Sir Cyril Burt. When he died in 1971, he was widely acclaimed as a founding father of British psychology and a commanding figure in the world of education. His decline began when it was alleged, some five years later, that he had fraudulently invented much of his most influential data on the inheritance of intelligence. The dispute which followed is one of the great causes célèbres of psychology.

Originally published in 1989, Robert B. Joynson took a penetrating new look at the ‘Burt Affair’, examining in detail the grounds on which Burt had been accused. He concluded that the accusations were ill-founded and that Burt must be exonerated.

Dr Joynson’s conclusions raised wider issues for psychology itself. How did such accusations come to be made, and how did they come to be so widely accepted? Joynson believed that the episode pointed to inherent weaknesses and limitations in the discipline of psychology itself.