I.o. Charlatan Exposed

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ment. Germany. BRITAIN 6 inDes. 12 istes 24 issues Recent revelations of rigged evidence and invented statis tics has brought the discussion on the hereditary or environmental source of intelligence back into the news.

The 'Nature or Nurture' dispute has of course been a bogey in biology ever since it was recognised that certain qualities of the individual are largely governed by heredity whilst others are strongly modified by the physical and social environPRESS * • EL I would like Dut Press. I wou lik NAME....

ADDRESS. SOCIALIST EUROPE 6 issUes. 12 mastaes 24 issues subscriptic class with respect to the working class and whites to other races.

The early geneticist Francis Galton thought that genius was hereditary and advocated a policy of selective breeding to preserve the intellectual stock.

By the 1930s some followers of Galton were proposing that workers on the dole should be sterilised, and the logical conclusion from the hypothesis was adopted in fascist -21.15 .£2.30 .£4.60 to Attempts to show that some individuals are genetically superior intellectually goes back at least to the last century, and for many Victorians it was axiomatic that certain groups were better endowed Most recently, Jensen in the USA and Eysenck in Britain have attempted to put racist and supremacist views on a "respectable" footing by using IQ tests to show both that intelligence is inherited, and that workers and blacks are less intelligent than bosses and whites respectively.

Using data derived from IQ tests, especially those showing that identical twins (who are genetically identical) have closely related IQ scores, even when they have been brought up apart, it has been argued that heredity accounts for 80% of intelligence - leaving only 20% to be accounted for by environment.

UNCOMMON

Idențical twins separated at birth are very uncommon, however, and consequently there are only four reports of such studies in scientific lterature.

All of these four have been challenged, for various reasons. Nevertheless they form the backbone of the argument that IQ is inherited.

Now it appears, however, that two of these four reports — and the best two at that - were faked.

It is widely accepted that Sir Cyril Burt, the founder of British Educational Psychology, published false data and invented crucial facts to support the theory that intelligence is largely inherited.

GUESSED

In a Sunday Times article on the controversy, four main charges are levelled against Burt; that he often guessed the IQ scores of people for whom he had no test available; that he invented the existence of two collaborators in order to give added authority to his publications; that he produced statistical values identical to three decimal places from different sets of data (a statistical impossibility); and tht he simply invented other findings to fit his theory.

This revelation becomes even more astonishing when it is realised that this 'evidence' was the basis of Burt's educational theories, such as his belief that the most common cause of educational retardation was "inborn inferiority of general intelligence."

This theory was the rationale for government policy of segregating the mentally subnormal so that they would not reproduce.

His theory that intelligence was innate and therefore unlikely to change after early life was incorporated in the 1944 Education Act, establishing the theoretical basis for segregating children into Grammar, Technical and Secondary Modern schools, according to their "innate" ability.

COMPREHENSIVE SCHOOLS This theory, incidentally, is also the centre of the case against comprehensive education.

Of course the revelations on Burt's work do not in themselves prove the case against his theores. though they are left as pure speculation, while a number of leading psychologists have quickly leapt to the defence of the theories whilst tut-tutting over Burt's 'unfortunate methods of supporting them.

PIONEER Perhaps the most forthright comment is that of Lord Alexander of Potterhill, General Secretary of the Association of Education Committees and a pioneer in use of IQ tests.

According to the Times of October 28th, Alexander has stated:

"Burt's fundamental propositions are not invalid. Some of the statistical evidence is open to challenge. I could not care less. I do not need any statistical evidence to recognise the validity of inheritance.

So much for the idea that "free society' is immune from ideological influence on science!

Nevertheless, it would be wrong simply to take the revelations about Burt as a bulwark for the environmentalist argument. Indeed, the whole 'Nature versus Nurture' debate arises from a sterie and mechanical conception.

PROPORTIONS

To ask what proportion of intelligence is due to genes, and what to environment is like asking what proportion of a car is steel, and what is labour.

It is only when the dialectical interaction, the unity as well as the conflict between them is studied that an appreciation can be made, not only of what shapes the indir idual intellect, but also of how it may be changed and given fullest expression.

The fact that science does not exist independently of sacety makes such a development ipos sible under capitalism.

By Dai Stephens.

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