A poster presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society for Brain. Behaviour, and Cognitive Science, Ottawa, 1998.

"Forgery, fakery, and plagiarism contradict every natural expectation for how scientists act; they challenge every positive image of science that society holds"

"The best evidence is always circumstantial"

• "Francis Galton ... was a patient of his father's and his whole life work can be seen as an attempt to uphold the Galtonian tradition". (Hearnshaw, 1979)
• did Ph.D. at Oxford with William McDougall, post-doc at U. of Wurzburg with Kulpe, then lectureship at Liverpool with Sherrington.
• In 1913 appointed psychologist to the London County Council; amasses extensive collection of data on schoolchildren
• In 1932 appointed Chair, University College, London, to replace Charles Spearman; knighted for contributions in 1946; editor, British Journal of Psychology
• prolific writer on individual differences, intelligence, and genetics;contributes to development of factor analysis
• retires in 1950 but publishes over 200 articles, one every five weeks, until his death in 1971
• publishes two articles on IQ correlations for separated MZ twins, one in 1955 and one in 1966
• article by Oliver Gillie, Oct. 1976, accuses Burt of scientific fraud because the two twin papers report exactly the same correlation values for different sample sizes.

Main Evidence of Fraud

In 1967, Burt's 1955 paper was reprinted in this book of readings edited by Stephen Wiseman. The paper, however, appeared with the curious note "abridged and revised by the author". This is only one of two papers in the entire Penguin series with this note. The other is Burt (1949), a paper on factor analysis.

pages 260 - 270: Text from Burt (1955) with additional sentences and phrases from Burt's 1958 paper in the American Psychologist.

pages 270 - 272: Added material dealing with the biographies of geniuses.

pages 272- 280: Text takem directly from Burt's 1958 paper in the American Psychologist. This source is not referenced or acknowledged.

And the data table references the twin sets from the Burt (1966) paper, not the sets in the 1955 paper.

(1) In the revised version, Burt (p. 272) includes the statement

"We have now collected as many as 53 such cases"

and references "C. Burt ... Amer. Psychologist, 13, 1958" which contained a similar sentence which read "over 30 such cases".

(2) In the revised version Burt reverses his original statement about the difficulty of finding separated twins:

The original version (Burt, 1955, p. 167) says:

"There is a natural prejudice against separating twins, especially if their sex is the same and we should like to repeat our appeal for further cases. Although the handful of monozygotic twins is decidedly small (and is the outcome of a quest that lasted over forty years), the differences betweeb this group and the rest are for the most part statistically significant."

The revised version (p. 272) says:

"Not infrequently the mother is unable or unwilling to bring up two children at the same time, and one is consequently sent to a relative or toa foster home. Owing to the popular prejudice against separating twins, she not unnaturally tries to keep these arrangements secret. But patient and tactful inquiries show that cases of twins brought up in different environments almost from birth are in fact much commoner than is usually believed."

• Burt published over 200 papers after he retired, an average of one every five weeks but he had neither grants nor other resources to gather new data.
• Burt did not use the accepted format of archival scientific reporting. He assumed his authority was enough to assure the reader that he had used proper scientific methods.

We have now learned:

• The "revised" version of Burt's 1955 paper that appears as a reprint in the Wiseman book is a misrepresentation of the original, fails to acknowledge the American Psychologist, and claims that the 1966 data was available in 1958.
• In the original 1955 paper, Burt claimed it was very difficult to find separated twins but in the revised version and again in the 1966 paper, he reversed himself and claimed it was really quite easy.

• Burt was a "cut and paste" writer who recycled old papers into new ones by rearranging the text to change the emphasis on a paper. Previous material was modified slightly and used again, and this occurred with both the text and the data.
• The data in the 1966 paper was probably a "little white lie" that snowballed out of control after he died.

This work was supported by NSERC grant A-9581 to the author. The author wishes to thank Jennifer Petrulis for assistance with the research and Sara Butler for library work. A paper based on this work is currently in press with the British Journal of Psychology. Preprints may be obtained from Brian Butler, Dept. of Psychology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, K7L 3N6 or by e-mail at: butlerb@psyc.queensu.ca

• Burt, C. L. (1955). The evidence for the concept of intelligence. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 25, 158-177.
• Burt, C. L. (1955 revised). The evidence for the concept of intelligence., in S. Wiseman , ed. (1968), Intelligence and Ability: Selected readings. Harmondsworth, UK; Penguin.
• Burt, C. L. (1958). The inheritance of mental ability: Bingham Lecture, 1957, American Psychologist, 13, 1-15.
• Burt, C. L. (1966). The genetic determination of differences in intelligence: a study of monozygotic twins reared together or apart, British Journal of Psychology, 57, 137-153.
• Gillie, O. (1976) Crucial data faked by eminent psychologist, Sunday Times Oct. 24, 1976, London.
• Hearnshaw, L. S. (1979). Cyril Burt: Psychologist, London: Hodden & Stoughton.
• Wiseman, S. (Ed.) (1968) Intelligence and Ability: Selected readings. Harmondsworth, UK; Penguin.