Question

How do you think it was possible for “race science” and “Eugenics” to be published at the time, despite being easily disproved today?

Answer 1

Answer:

Both of these movements took place before the Civil rights movements and colonies gaining independence of the 1960s where a serious reckoning over discrimination began and continues today.

Explanation:

When the America Civil right War occurred, the result was that freedmen were freed but didn't not mean that the freedmen were treated equally nor fairly. Hence why discrimination continued often spearheaded by state governments with the federal governments doing little to deter it. Along side this was the rise of pseudo science movements. Science despite pushing empirical evidence can be tainted by the bias of those utilizing it. So brain surgeon of those times may see slight differences in skull shapes and use that as "evidence" for pseudo science to justify discrimination instead of seeing that beneath the skull, are the same organs, that look the same, function the same and can't be found in another species besides homosapiens (modern humans). This is why peer-reviewes and continous replication of experiments between different generations of scientists are important.