Sir Cyril Lodowic Burt, FBA (3 March 1883 – 10 October 1971) was an English educational psychologist and geneticist who also made contributions to statistics.

Shortly after he died, his studies of inheritance of intelligence were discredited after evidence emerged indicating he had falsified research data, inventing correlations in separated twins which did not exist, alongside other fabrications.

[citation needed] He attended King's (now known as Warwick) School, in the county town, from 1892 to 1895, and later won a scholarship to Christ's Hospital, then located in London, where he developed his interest in psychology.

Burt was one of a group of students who worked with McDougall, which included William Brown, John Flügel, and May Smith, who all went on to have distinguished careers in psychology.

[8] Burt graduated with second-class honours in Literae Humaniores (Classics) in 1906, taking a special paper in psychology in his Final Examinations.

In 1907, McDougall invited Burt to help with a nationwide survey of physical and mental characteristics of the British people, proposed by Francis Galton, in which he was to work on the standardization of psychological tests.

In 1913, Burt took the part-time position of a school psychologist for the London County Council (LCC), with the responsibility of picking out the "feeble-minded" children, in accordance with the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913.

The post also allowed him to work in Spearman's laboratory, and receive research assistants from the National Institute of Industrial Psychology, including Winifred Raphael.

[11] In 1924 Burt was also appointed part-time professor of educational psychology at the London Day Training College (LDTC), and carried out much of his child guidance work on the premises.

[13] While at London, Burt influenced many students, including Raymond Cattell and Hans Eysenck, and toward the end of his life, Arthur Jensen and Chris Brand.

This issue, and the allegations of fraudulent scholarship against him, are discussed in various books and articles listed below, including Cyril Burt: Fraud or Framed and The Mismeasure of Man.

In 1946 he became the first British psychologist to be knighted for his contributions to psychological testing and for making educational opportunities more widely available, according to an account by J. Philippe Rushton.

[35] Gillie's 1976 article in The Sunday Times, reprinted in The Phi Delta Kappan in 1977, summarised attempts to trace two of Burt's supposed collaborators, Margaret Howard and J. Conway.

[37] Arthur Jensen was given the opportunity to respond to Gillie's article in the same issue of the same journal, and described the claims as libellous, without evidence and driven by opposition to Burt's theories.

However, he does not address the central issue, that Burt wrote scientific papers and published them as editor of a journal under false names and without the consent of the supposed authors.

[39] In his 1991 book, Fletcher questioned Gillie's claim of the lack of independent articles published by Howard or Conway in scientific journals other than the Journal of Statistical Psychology edited by Burt, claiming Howard was also said to be mentioned in the membership list of the British Psychological Society, John Cohen was said to have remembered her well during the 1930s,[40] and Donald MacRae had personally received an article from her in 1949 and 1950.

[45] Nicholas Mackintosh edited Cyril Burt: Fraud or Framed?, which was presented by the publisher as arguing that "his defenders have sometimes, but by no means always, been correct, and that his critics have often jumped to hasty conclusions.

In their haste, however, these critics have missed crucial evidence that is not easily reconciled with Burt's total innocence, leaving the perception that both the defence and prosecution cases are seriously flawed.