What was the Burt “scandal”? In what way did it reflect the age–old controversy concerning nature versus nurture?
Cyril Burt was born in 1883 in London, UK and supported Spearman’s concept regarding ‘general intelligence’. He researched throughout his life and summarized his results in a paper, which was published posthumously in 1972.
The ‘Burt Scandal’ is referred to the scandal that charged Burt to make false claims based on fraudulent data in his research works, regarding the inheritance of intelligence. A person known as Leon Kamin first reviewed Burt’s data in his published works and found a number of discrepancies. A journalist known as Oliver Gillie found out that the person whom Burt had listed as having gathered data for him, was false. They either did not exist or never had the experience of collecting any data for Cyril Burt.
A committee was formed to find out whether these claims were true or not. Leslie Hearnshaw found out in the year 1979 that Burt had supported his own position under a pseudonym and had subsequently published with a co-author who never existed. These facts proved that there were enough evidences to disapprove Burt’s papers. However, some argued that the matter could have been exaggerated and it was even possible that the data of Burt’s works could have been destroyed by Nazi air-strikes in the Second World War.
The Burt Scandal reflects the age-old controversy concerning of nature versus nurture because Burt was of the opinion that intelligence is inherited. He published his results based on studying identical twins. Though a number of discrepancies were found out in his paper, many scientists supported him, who shared the same belief that intelligence and intellect are inherited and that environment plays no role.
Raymond B Cattell, who studied with Spearman, gave the conclusion in 1982 based on his study that intelligence is 65 % inherited. Arthur Jensen studied twins and reported in 1985 that genes and intelligence have a 0.74 positive correlation.
On the other hand, the critics of Burt supported the nurture theory. They were of the opinion that though inheritance plays a small part, intelligence could be shaped up by the education friendly environment. This total episode exposed the politics of science and divided the scientific world into two halves, the scientists who believed that IQ (intelligence quotient) is heritable (conservatives or nativists) and the scientists who believed that IQ is based on Nurture (liberals or nurturists).