Category talk:Scientific racism

Applicability of scientific racism cat

@Johnpacklambert: recently removed the scientific racism category from a large number of BLPs and publications. They didn't leave an edit summary, so I have no idea what the justification for these removals is, but I'm opening the discussion here in case editors think there's a need for a centralized discussion.

To my mind:

• It clearly applies to 19th and early 20th century figures who were openly and explicitly involved in racist science. This would include people like Joseph Peterson (removed here) who is consistently cited as a proponent of scientific racism.
• It almost certainly applies to high profile advocates like Richard Lynn and Kevin MacDonald, both of whom are closely linked to white supremacist groups and explicitly racist publications like Mankind Quarterly. Contemporary sources consistently link them to scientific racism.

I do think there's a valid question as to whether or not it applies to people like Charles Murray, who don't really purport to be scientists, or to people like Richard Haier who may not be high-profile enough for us to demonstrate WP:CATDEF. Thoughts? Nblund ^talk 18:27, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

@DougWeller: and @Grayfell: Nblund ^talk 18:29, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

I completely agree with this approach. We should be more cautious, and some of these removals were appropriate, but this was excessive. Considering this comment, and this edit summary at John Baker (biologist) (which I responded to here), it appears to me that Johnpacklambert is applying an overly-restrictive or non-standard definition of scientific racism, among other issues. If we do not agree on what the term means, we cannot agree on how it is applied.

I guess I should note that meeting CATDEF for Baker is worth discussing (as with Murray and Heier) but Baker's 1974 book was definitely a clear-cut example of scientific racism. Grayfell (talk) 20:39, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

• I really think we should diffuse into the inteligence controversy articles. A lot of this boils down to debates about if intelligence is inherently biologically set, or the other view advocated by people such as Thomas Sowell that it is clearly not, and such is provde by the rise in intelligence rates of American Jews from WWI to the 1960s even though it is the same biological population more or less. Sowell also rejects the classic views that it has to do with cultural bias in the tests themselves, since the biggest change is in the reasoning questions. What Sowell does not posit is a clear explanation of what is going on. Still Charles Murray and others who worked with him generally cannot be easily tagged with "scientific racism".John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:34, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

I think Category:Race_and_intelligence_controversy should be a non-diffusing category, or shouldn't be a subcategory of scientific racism at all. The category includes both proponents and critics of the conjecture that genetic differences explain racial differences in IQ. Moreover, many advocates of scientific racism also espouse theories of racial superiority in other areas that are not related to intelligence. Richard Lynn, for instance, claims that there is a racial basis to crime rates and personality differences. John Baker's claim that black people have a "fetid smell" obviously has nothing to do with race and IQ. Nblund ^talk 15:02, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Nblund is correct. Just take a look at Scientific racism. Doug Weller talk 12:59, 1 September 2019 (UTC)