An example of a historical scientific idea now known to be unfounded.
The human race and races
Racialism is the name given to a once common set of scientific ideas and practices, based on the idea that the human race can be divided by biological criteria into a number of distinct subgroups, so called races.
At one time it was seriously thought that there was a number of sufficiently distinct types of human being to allow anatomical and physiological categorisation into distinct 'races'.
Modern genetic studies show this is unfounded.,
"…presumptive races are very heterogenous genetically, and can't be easily distinguished from their neighbours genetically. There are, of course, biological differences among groups of people. We call that pattern of difference – the differences between groups – polytypy. But the amount of heterogeneity within any group, or polymorphism, considerably dwarfs the amount of detectable polytypy."
Jonathan Marks, 2017
There is considerable variety in genes, and so phenotypes, between people. People vary in adult height, eye color, skin tone, build, hair texture, susceptibility to diseases, and in many other ways. But these variations due to different permutations of genes from the human gene pool* do not support classification of people in to a small number of distinct 'types'. There may be clusters of characteristics in certain populations, but there is also considerable overlap between populations.
Thus, to suggest there are several biological races of humans is an alternative conception (misconception) – one which draws on folk knowledge. That is, it is common for people to categorise both others and themselves along crude racial lines. These identities are real enough (and official government forms sometimes ask people to classify their ethnicity in such ways). And often they have real effects (e.g., racism). But they do not have a sound scientific basis.
There are also very real distinctions between socialists and conservatives, between atheists and religious, between Chelsea fans and Arsenal fans, etc., etc., but none of these reflect basic biological divisions (and no one is likely to suggest otherwise). Race is a real socio-political distinction because it is a set of categories perceived as important by, and acted on by, many people (as the distinction between liberals and conservatives is, if not absolute and unchanging, real enough). As long as people adopt and act on these categories they will remain significant – but they are cultural categories, not scientific ones. (When I was a child I optimistically expected the use of such categories would fade away during my lifetime, but it looks like they will outlive me!)
Racialism reflected a time when many scientists thought that the races reflected genuine ontological biological distinctions. While many of those scientists imported racist assumptions into their work, racialism was not in itself racist but rather a hypothesis that seemed reasonable at the time.
After all:
- many species do have recognised 'races' or varieties, even if since Darwin we have had to recognise none of these distinctions are ever absolute and fixed.
- And Homo sapiens did co-exist with other human species at one time. Read: 'Can ancestors be illegitimate?') However, a scientist adopting racialism today can be considered to be adopting a racist trope as the hypothesis is known to be contrary to the scientific evidence.
A hypothesis that once seemed reasonable become non-viable as biological research proceeded.
Anthropometry
Anthropometry was the scientific study of racial differences based on various physical anatomical measurements. The intention was to characterise the different racial groups. A more specific activity was craniometry which focused on the differences between skulls from different groups.
These practices were often used to make deductions that went well beyond the data (the size of the space in a skull for the brain being assumed to relate directly to intelligence for example). There are examples here of how scientists' (racist) presumptions sometimes influenced their expectations and subsequently their findings.
Clearly a major challenge in any such scientific programme would be sampling populations from the supposed different groups. This is not just a matter of sample size, but the more challenging issue of ensuring samples were representative of populations. (This is a major problem in many types of research today: read about sampling in research. Inadequate sampling can completely undermine research findings.)
There was also the danger of circular or tautological thinking. Before measuring a cranium as an example of some supposed racial group, one needs to assign it to a 'race'. A scientist who had already assumed, say, that he would find Caucausian skulls tended to be the largest, could be influenced in how they assigned smaller or larger skulls (or whether certain skulls should be excluded from the analysis as atypical or not clearly fitting any group), with the effect that the work reflected the scientist's starting assumptions. Such effects need not reflect deliberate malpractice, as the scientist may not recognise how their own biases are at work.
While anthropometry made sense when scientists seriously considered there were distinct human races, the whole enterprise became pointless once it was recognised such biological distinctions do not exist. This is an example of a scientific field which is now considered as a pseudoscience, but at one time the work was taken very seriously.
* Or more strictly, how these genes interact with the environmental conditions. Genes associated with being tall many not lead to a tall adult if that person suffers food shortages as a child. (And a blonde may choose to dye their hair or shave it off.)
Work cited:
Marks, Jonathan (2017) Is Science Racist? Polity Press
