Scientific racism

Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscientific belief that the human species is divided into biologically distinct taxa called "races", and that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racial discrimination, racial inferiority, or racial superiority. Modern scientific consensus rejects this view as being irreconcilable with genetic research.

Scientific racism misapplies, misconstrues, or distorts physical anthropology, craniometry, evolutionary biology, and other disciplines or pseudo-disciplines through proposing typologies to classify human populations into physically discrete human races, some of which are asserted to be superior or inferior to others.

Before the mid-20th century, scientific racism was accepted throughout the scientific community, but it is no longer considered scientific. Today, a number of euphemisms for scientific racism are used by those who support these ideas, including racialism, racial realism, race realism, or race science.