The Burt Affair

Robert B. Joynson

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040318546
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of tables
• 1 Pioneer
• 2 Scandal
• 3 Discoveries
• 4 Burt’s historical claims: the early papers
• 5 Burt’s historical claims: Spearman and Pearson
• 6 Burt’s kinship studies: the invariant correlations
• 7 Burt’s kinship studies: the missing assistants
• 8 Burt’s last papers
• 9 The mad professor
• 10 Burt’s character
• 11 How it happened: the accusation
• 12 How it happened: the endorsement
• Appendix A: A disputed priority
• Appendix B: Letter from Thorndike to Spearman, 17 October 1904
• Appendix C: Note from Burt (1917: 53)
• Appendix D: Letter from Sir Halford Cook, 30 August 1984
• Bibliography
• Index