Talk:Scientific racism

The Australian government

The Australian government treated the Australian Aborigines inhumanely and committed serious human rights violation against this group

Scientific Racism Social Darwinism Eugenics Impact of colonialism on Aborigines Immigration policies Stolen Generation Assimilation progammes — Preceding unsigned comment added by 105.245.122.124 (talk) 12:31, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Boulainvilliers Sources

This article desperately needs sources about Boulainvilliers. I am not nearly expert enough to do so, sadly, as this is on the fringes of my expertise. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8807:8687:8C00:7156:8017:3F27:8668 (talk) 20:52, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

James watson and use of the term "scientific" in the title

I'm sorry if these discussions have been done already but I wonder :

1. If james watson should be included in the article as well, as he's had a lot of comments on the relation between genetics and races. He's a pretty important scientific so I figure he should be at least mentioned in the article. But on the other hand he went so awry, and I don't think he's fair to consider him a scientific when it comes to his ideas about DNA and races. Maybe it's like mentioning Pauling on an article about vitamin C megadosage (but actuallin Pauling is mentioned on said article, anyway...).

2. If the title could be improved. The use of "scientific" in the article's title is really misleading.

Alexisbu (talk) 12:03, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

1. This article is about people trying to find scientific evidence to justify racism. Watson never did any research to support his prejudices, he just blabs on about them, so he is not a scientific racist, just a normal one.
2. It's like Scientific creationism, which is not scientific either. Or a sealion, which is not a lion. --Hob Gadling (talk) 12:37, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Would this be appropriate to add to Scientific racism#After 1945?

In 2022 The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on a researcher at Cleveland State University whose "home institution was essentially providing a soapbox for racist pseudoscience.... Despite nearly a dozen publications over more than a decade arguing for the intellectual inferiority of Black people," the professor was judged to have meritorious research and was promoted and given tenure. In 2022 he was fired following an investigation by the National Institutes of Health that found that he had violated regulations concerning the handling of medical data. The article states that he had some influence on "public misperceptions of race" as a result of heavy editing of an early version of Wikipedia's article on race and intelligence.

Note the related discussion at WP:AN#A question about outing policy. NightHeron (talk) 11:26, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

References

I don't know if this is really a significant enough event in the history of scientific racism to warrant a mention, especially not a whole paragraph. We need to be wary about giving undue weight to things just because they involved Wikipedia. Maybe in Reliability of Wikipedia#Propagation of misinformation or similar, though? – Joe (talk) 13:18, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Seems more due at Race and intelligence and/or Cleveland State University. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:20, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Or even History of the race and intelligence controversy? It's definitely some solid investigative reporting. It would be good, however, to wait to see if other sources pick up the story at all. Generalrelative (talk) 15:46, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

I decided to come here first rather than R&I or History of the race and intelligence controversy because the Scientific racism article already has a section with closely related content, such as the reference to Saini's concern in her book and the mention of a major press (Elsevier) publishing racist pseudoscience that had to be retracted. The section History of the race and intelligence controversy#2000-present deals with the substantive debate rather than with particular incidents or scandals, so this paragraph would seem out of place there.

The article in The Chronicle of Higher Education highlights the white supremacist researcher's editing of R&I as evidence of his influence on the public. It's not the first time the early editing of that article was a focus of off-wiki attention. A 2018 article by the Southern Poverty Law Center about alt-right influence on Wikipedia focused on R&I, that is, the version of several years ago. For a while the R&I talk-page had a link to the SPLC article. So I think the Wikipedia angle is WP:DUE, although probably not for Scientific racism. NightHeron (talk) 18:22, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

I added part of the text to Criticism of Wikipedia#Racial bias in the paragraph about the SPLC article. NightHeron (talk) 09:01, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

I added the reference to MDPI#Controversial articles. XOR'easter (talk) 17:46, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

I also added the text, minus the part about Wikipedia, to Cleveland State University, per HEB's suggestion above. I initially thought of putting it in the Race and intelligence article, but the relevant section of that article is titled "The Pioneer Fund and The Bell Curve", and the text is not related to either. It might be useful to put more about the recent history of racial pseudoscience in the R&I article, such as content from Scientific racism and/or History of the race and intelligence controversy, in which case we'd also change the title of the section. I'm not sure. NightHeron (talk) 10:49, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

This isn't related to scientific theories

The Christian Bible was interpreted to sanction slavery and from the 1820s to the 1850s was often used in the antebellum Southern United States, by writers such as the Rev. Richard Furman and Thomas R. Cobb, to enforce the idea that Negroes had been created inferior, and thus suited to slavery.[61]

1. This isn't related to science. The source backs it up. But the source doesn't speak of science here. But if you read the source further, it does actually deal with "christianity+science" here instead

There was a growing movement in America shortly before the Civil War, as pressure against slavery was increasing, to justify slavery not just with scripture [this refers to 1820-1850], but also with so-called "science". At this time, however, most biologists, known then as naturalists, were theologically trained. Biology was still considered to be a Biblically based study of "the creation" before Darwin came along.

This doesn't say 1820-1850 [it explicitly says that was only with regards to scripture!]. I believe this should be understood as 1850-1860. By the way, this is just my insight, literal reading among intellectuals of the Bible was dropped long ago at this point in time - so far as science was produced by interpretting the bible at this point in time, it would have been considered fringe. 2. The source is also questionable and fails WP:RSSELF anyway and appears to be advocacy material. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.237.80.141 (talk • contribs) 04:52, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Yo, I'm the same person, by the way, back in days the paragraph looked like this: [...] Unilinealism depicting a progression from primitive human societies to industrialised civilisation became popular amongst philosophers including Friedrich Hegel, Immanuel Kant and Auguste Comte, and fitted well with the Christian belief of a divine Creation following which all of humanity descended from the same Adam and Eve. In contrast, polygenist theory alleged that there were different origins of mankind, thus making it possible to conceive of different, biological, human races, or to classify other humans as akin to animals without rights. Early scientific racist theories such as Arthur Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853-1855) were mostly decadent in that they did not believe in the possibility of "improvement of the race. The text marked with fat was removed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scientific_racism&diff=prev&oldid=180954538 . Later a year after and fitted well with the Christian belief of a divine Creation following which all of humanity descended from the same Adam and Eve. was removed as well here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/98.214.100.36 . So the entire paragraph was kinda washed from any information that could put christianity in a positive light and replaced with information that put christianity in a negative light. So it clearly appears like there is some anti-christianity advocacy going on here, especially because the new passage at the end of the paragraph has no ground (nor relevance). I have no idea whether it's worth to insert the christianity-friendly information back. My opinion is that we should have in mind that this is about scientific racism, not religious racism. The paragraph should definitely be fixed.130.225.188.131 (talk) 19:23, 24 January 2023 (UTC)