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From: cam@edai.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.edai   031 667 1011 x2550)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,sci.psychology
Subject: Re: Genetics and IQ
Keywords: The Burt Affair
Message-ID: <528@edai.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 24 Aug 89 17:36:42 GMT
References: <3229@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> <4537@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> <519@athen.sinix.UUCP>
Reply-To: cam@edai.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Organization: Dept of AI, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh
Lines: 56

In article <519@athen.sinix.UUCP> es@athen.UUCP (Dr. Sanio) writes:
>
>Some questions and comments about IQ discussion:
>In the discussion twin studies have been mentioned. It was pointed out
>that a former "classic" inquiry contained faked results.

The following notes are taken from a review in the Guardian of "The Burt
Affair", R.B. Joynson, Routledge, the review by Dr Clare Burstall.

In 1976 Burt was accused of falsifying research results in order to
bolster his views on selective education, and of inventing research
assistants. In 1979 Prof Hearnshaw's biography of Burt endorsed these
charges, and added more. In 1980 The Council of the British
Psychological Society accepted Hearnshaw's arguments as "evidence of
fraud". 

I quote:

"The flaws in Hearnshaw are so glaring and ubiquitous that it seems as
though no one had seriously attempted to check ... the catalogue is
damming ... suspicion did duty for evidence ... Joynson states: `the
attempt to confirm Hearnshaw's account has failed; not occasionally and
incidentally, but repeatedly and crucially ... this enquiry provides
fresh grounds for supposing that Burt's most important data were in fact
genuine ... no reliable indication of fabrication whatever ... The Burt
affair must never be forgotten. It is a paradigm of the corruption of
scientific judgement by the common sense, the values, and the
controversies of the everyday world.' ... This is a scholarly and
measured account of of a patient and painstaking examination of the
evidence assembled in attempts to convict an innocent man of
acandalously fraudulent and deceitful behaviour."

Why? Joynson suggests, and Burstall agrees, that while Burt's data
(suggesting a substantial genetic component in IQ) at the time were
squarely in line with popular liberal views on education (e.g., that IQ
testing and streaming lifted up and gave a proper opportunity to clever
children whose background fell foul of teachers' prejudices), in the
1970s popular liberal views felt that grading and labelling children's
academic performance was a bad thing to do, and that any scientific
evidence suggesting the inheritance of intelligence smacked dangerously
of elitism, racism, etc.. So Burt was demolished, the strength of
popular feeling overwhelming scientific objectivity to the extent that
unsubstantiated rumour based on wishful thinking became textbook fact.

The controversy apparently still rages in comp.ai! Several posters have
argued in very strong terms that the notion that humans differ in basic
mental genetic endowment is tantamount to fascism, a denial of basic
human rights, a contradiction in terms, socialist nonsense,
evolutionarily improbable, manifestly silly, etc. etc.

I'm cross-posting to sci.psychology to find out what academic
psychologists think :-)
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.edai   031 667 1011 x2550
Department of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK