Does the Spectre of Cyril Burt Hang Over Transgender People?

If you ever took the 11-Plus test, you can thank Cyril Burt, considered the “father of educational psychology”. His main academic contribution was developing IQ tests and research, on which British academic selection systems later came to be based. 

His central idea was that intelligence was innate and fixed – those who were the most intelligent came to be the best off, while those who were the least intelligent came to be the worst off. His data was later found to be either forged or collected carelessly, and the general idea has since (for the most part) been supplanted by evidence of neuroplasticity.

That prevalent idea of fixed intelligence has caused harm in societies, but it is not Cyril Burt’s legacy to bear alone. Burt was influenced by Francis Galton and the Eugenics Education Society, and was part of a longer line of scientists from across the Northern Hemisphere in researching and promoting eugenics. His fate was to act as a “useful idiot” for a scientific tendency supporting British imperial hegemony at home and in the colonies at the turn of the 20^th Century. 

His ideas still float around today, particularly by vested interests who stand to benefit from the fixed intelligence theory. In that way, his story must be a cautionary tale of the ways in which vested interests are able to instrumentalise scientific research and “useful idiot” researchers for their own ends. 

To transgender people in the UK, there must be an eerie echo of Cyril Burt’s story in the figure of Hillary Cass. To explain, Hillary Cass is a Paediatrician and is renowned as a Baroness. Her life peerage was awarded for developing palliative care services for children and founding the first Rett clinic in London. 

She is undoubtedly an expert in her work dealing with children who are palliative, autistic, severely epileptic, and have multiple disabilities. However, the Baroness was appointed to lead the “Cass Review” for the NHS on gender identity services for children and young people in the UK in 2020, and later in 2025 for gender identity services in Northern Ireland. 

Her UK-level report was met critically.. Transgender-led organisations pointed out that transgender people were excluded from the core team working on the report, going against the trumpeted value of co-production, espoused by NHS England, which should be included in all aspects of healthcare. 

There was a high degree of disagreement over the actual results and the methodology of her report. Some thought the results were “common sense” but fed anti-trans narratives, while others explained in detail how the methodology and results were flawed and incredibly dangerous to have released.  

Finally, organisations could prove the involvement of several figures in the Cass Report and NHS England Working Group on Gender Dysphoria, who are associated with conversion practices and lobbying groups or organisations seeking to push “gender exploration”, or the pathologisation of transgender people. 

When you look at the stories of Cyril Burt and Hillary Cass, you can see they are similar. Both believe their research strongly, even though real concerns have been raised over the results, and there is the miasma of vested interests pushing ideas around the research, seeking to unduly influence scientific findings. 

This is a situation where the “research and facts are fixed around the policy”. The absence of actual service users or people with lived experience and selective sourcing is a travesty for anyone seeking to engage in honest scientific or policy research. If this experience had been included, the report would have highlighted how difficult it is for transgender adults and children to get support. They must negotiate with their GPs just to get a modicum of the treatment they need. They must prove over and over again to everyone except other transgender people that they are not “going through a phase."

In one writing by a transgender person, they note that being transgender is an innate feeling. They feel that their mind is perfectly fine, but the body is incorrect. They must prove, without objective empirical evidence, to others and themselves that they are a man or a woman. Where was this viewpoint included in the Cass Report? 

The result is that, like Cyril Burt, and probably without intention on Hillary Cass’s part, many will be harmed for years to come by faulty research. The tragedy is that so-called scientific researchers were incapable of facing bias or saying: “I was wrong.” Transgender people will continue to be marginalised and abused, isolated and driven to suicide, as a result.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/Unknown Author

Licence.

No image changes made.