In 1893, he was awarded the John Stuart Mill Studentship in Philosophy of Mind and Logic, and four years later was elected a Fellow of University College.
His colleague Karl Pearson once said: "The creative mind has the potentiality of poet, artist and scientist within its grasp, and Goring's friends were never very certain in which category to place him.
Under the sponsorship of the British government, Goring, assisted by other prison medical officers, as well as Karl Pearson and his staff at the Biometrics Laboratory, collected and analysed data bearing upon 96 traits of each of over 3,000 English convicts.
He ultimately concluded that "the physical and mental constitution of both criminal and law-abiding persons, of the same age, stature, class, and intelligence, are identical.
Goring went on to argue that one of the three measures in which to combat crime was to "regulate the reproduction of those degrees of constitutional qualities - feeble-minded, inebriety, epilepsy, social instinct, etc".