Listen, Scientific racism is the use of scientific techniques and hypotheses to sanction the belief in racial superiority, inferiority or racism.

Now obviously they're gonna come to some heavy pseudo scientific conclusions. BUT this does not erase the bond between science and racism, their history, and the issue in general. I never said that racism is a solid science and not pseudoscience, I simply said it was an issue involved with science.

what do you suggest as an alternative method to answering questions?
faith and mysticism? shall we go back to the dark ages, where illnesses were referred
to as "demons"?

Thus we can make lots of things sound like scientific truth even though they are not. This still is science.

I see the o.p linked al jazeera and also linked something about Dawkins. I watched an interview with Dawkins a couple of months ago on al jazeera by a muslim scholar and it was all very good and fair until the the interviewer told Dawkins that he believed Mohammad flew up to god on a winged horse.

I think that what the o.p is talking about is a clash between science and religious views. I may be wrong though.

The conflict thesis is the proposition that there is an intrinsic intellectual conflict between religion and science and that the relationship between religion and science inevitably leads to public hostility. The thesis, refined beyond its most simplistic original forms, remains generally popular. However, historians of science no longer support it.[1][2][3][4]

England and the Enlightenment played important roles in the development of technology as material means to spiritual ends. Soteriology (study of salvation) and eschatology (study of end-times) were common preoccupations in learned circles. Most educated men took very seriously the prophecy of Daniel that "many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased" (Daniel 12:4) as a sign that The End was close.

Their attempts to increase knowledge about the world and improve human technology was not part of a dispassionate program to simply learn about the world, but instead to be active in millennarian expectations of Apocalypse. Technology played a key role in this as the means by which humans regained mastery over the natural world which was promised in Genesis but which humanity lost in the Fall. As historian Charles Webster observes, "The Puritans genuinely thought that each step in the conquest of nature represented a move towards the millennial condition."

As Margaret Jacob notes: "Almost every important seventeenth century English scientist or promoter of science from Robert Boyle to Isaac Newton believed in the approaching millennium." Accompanying this was the desire to recover the original Adamic perfection and knowledge lost with the Fall.

The Royal Society was founded in 1660 for the purpose of improving general knowledge and practical knowledge; its Fellows worked at experimental inquiries and the mechanical arts. Philosophically and scientifically, the founders were strongly influenced by Francis Bacon. John Wilkins, for example, claimed in The Beauty of Providence that the advancement of scientific knowledge would allow humanity to recover from the Fall.

Robert Hooke wrote that the Royal Society existed "to attempt the recovery of such allowable arts and inventions as are lost." Thomas Sprat was certain that science was the prefect way to establish "man's redemption." Robert Boyle thought that scientists had a special relationship with God — that they were "born the priest of nature" and that they would ultimately "have a far greater knowledge of God's wonderful universe than Adam himself could have had."

The Freemasons are a direct outgrowth and excellent example of this. In Masonic writings, God is identified very specifically as a practitioner of mechanical arts, most often as the "Great Architect" who had "the Liberal Sciences, particularly Geometry, written on his Heart." Members are encouraged to practice the same scientific arts not only to reclaim lost Adamic knowledge but also to become more God-like. Freemasonry was a means to redemption and perfection through the cultivation of science and technology.

A particular legacy of Freemasonry for the rest of society is the development of engineering as a profession by Freemasons in England. August Comte wrote of the role engineers would play in humanity's reclamation of Eden: "the establishment of the class of engineers... will, without doubt, constitute the direct and necessary instrument of coalition between men of science and industrialists, by which alone the new social order can commence." Comte suggested that they, the new priesthood, imitate priests and monks by renouncing pleasures of the flesh.

At this point it is worth noting that in the Genesis account, the Fall occurs when Adam and Eve eat fruit of knowledge — knowledge of good and evil. So it is ironic that we find scientists promoting an increase in knowledge in the pursuit of regaining the lost perfection. It isn't a complete contradiction, but it is a conflict which I have not seen resolved.

This was more or less what I was trying to get across. I don't understand the reasoning behind, "since we can see it's pseudoscience in retrospect, we can dismiss the issue of scientific racism altogether." It's just a fact that some scientists have put across racist theories throughout history, of course they get disproved, but this doesn't take away from the issue in the first place.

nope, I was a Merck Index reader.

and praying should be reserved for self-improvement,
not imposing will on others.. that's akin to magic spells,
and other witch foolery.

You can't claim science itself is racist or militaristic.

My issue was not with science solely, it was with racism in science hence: scientific racism.

I completely agree! That was my point, although I am still not too keen on the term "scientific racism".

You keep posting the same tired article...I think it's safe to say that anyone who's interested in reading it now has more than enough links to pull it from.

Marks' work is simply an examination of the use of pseudoscientific methods, masked as "science," to justify/validate racist beliefs.

As related to this thread; the issue is not with Science or the Scientific Method, but with racists attempting to justify their ideologies using pseudoscientific methodologies, cloaked as Science, in order to grant them the authority/legitimacy of scientific studies.

2) Marks' analysis essentially does not engage with the colonialist/imperialist (or capitalist) frameworks in which these people existed/exist...rendering the work little more than academic masturbation, imo.

1) How are such belief systems initially constructed and why is the facade of Science so appealing to use as a trojan horse for them?
2) How are such beliefs manipulated for presentation as Science?
3) What power do these belief systems have with/without the facade of science?
4) Who perpetuates/benefits from these belief systems?
5) How can these belief systems be deconstructed?

For a more radical, albeit shorter, examination of the manifestation of racism in scientific fields and the actual mechanisms involved, here's an article worth glancing at.

Imo, the history of racist crackpots attempting to justify their ideas through Science is hardly a notable condemnation of Science as racist.