THE REAL ERROR OF CYRIL BURT
discussed Alfred Binet's two daughters, noted that their father had
been disinclined to connect physical signs with mental prowess, and
pointed out that the blond, blue-eyed, large-headed daughter of
Teutonic appearance was objective and forthright, while the
darker daughter tended to be impractical and sentimental. Touche.
Burt was no fool. I confess that I began reading him with the
impression, nurtured by spectacular press reports of his fraudulent
work, that he was simply a devious and foxy charlatan. To be sure,
that he became and for complex reasons (see pp. 264—269). But as
I read, I gained respect for Burt's enormous erudition, for his
remarkable sensitivity in most areas, and for the subtlety and com-
plexity of his reasoning; I ended up liking most things about him
in spite of myself. And yet, this assessment makes the extraordi-
nary weakness of his reasoning about the innateness of intelligence
all the more puzzling. If he had simply been a fool, then foolish
arguments would denote consistency of character.
My dictionary defines an idee fixe, or fixed idea, as "a persistent
or obsessing idea, often delusional, from which a person cannot
escape." The innateness of intelligence was Burt's idee fixe. When
he turned his intellectual skills to other areas, he reasoned well,
subtly, and often with great insight. When he considered the
innateness of intelligence, blinders descended and his rational
thinking evaporated before the hereditarian dogma that won his
fame and eventually sealed his intellectual doom. It may be
remarkable that Burt could operate with such a duality in styles of
reasoning. But I find it much more remarkable that so many others
believed Burt's statements about intelligence when his arguments
and data, all readily available in popular publications, contained
such patent errors and specious claims. What does this teach us
about shared dogma masquerading as objectivity?
LATER ARGUMENTS
Perhaps I have been unfair in choosing Burt's earliest work for
criticism. Perhaps the foolishness of youth soon yielded to mature
wisdom and caution. Not at all; Burt was nothing if not ontogenet-
ically consistent. The argument of 1909 never changed, never
gained subtlety, and ended with manufactured support. The
innateness of intelligence continued to function as dogma. Con-
sider the primary argument of Burt's most famous book, The Back-