The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

And if you read that in history, what does that tell you about the present and the possibility of it being the case with some fields today?

My point is obviously not to defend those fields, but to say that pseudoscience maskerading as science isn't a thing that can only happen in the past.

It's a bit strange to learn about the fact that it happened before yet not accept the possibility that some of the things we call science today, aren't.

A Vulcan would not say "emotions are illogical." They would say "What does this emotion says and does it make sense in this situation?" Or "how would I feel more appropriately for this situation?". Or "this emotion doesn't make sense for this situation."

Sometime, it's more appropriate for us to rely on intuition and instinct and it would be more rational for us to do that instead. Imagine someone's about to be hit by a car. You have only seconds to move them out of the way. You don't have time to ponder so you just do it.

Thinking and logic is a general problem solving tool that's very useful in certain context, but they are very slow to use. By itself it is not a complete toolkit for dealing with emotional issues. Can't exactly make yourself less angry using just logic alone. You need some emotional tools to dial down counterproductive emotions.

That's the operating phrase though. Throughout history, atrocities were justified using whatever was seen as the higher authority at the moment - the will of a deity, the words of a prophet, the decree of a king, appeal to destiny or legacy, and yes, science too. Especially in the early XX century, when science was kicking into gear, and delivering miracles left and right for everyone to see - it was easy tool to abuse to justify whatever the leaders wanted or needed to.

Doesn't mean the science itself is at fault here.

I didn't read up much on phrenology so I won't comment on it, but RE eugenics, I see it as a mix of good and bad ideas that sprouted in an environment full of aforementioned hatred and otherwise devoid of moral and ethical boundaries[0]. I feel it's more of a historical coincidence of fledging science and then-contemporary zeitgeist, rather than an innate feature of science. The resulting effect is that even the word itself - eugenics - casts a long shadow on research in fields like genetics, medicine and economics. There are whole subsections of those fields you can't discuss in polite company, 'lest someone rounds your thinking off to "eugenics" and therefore paint you as "nazi". This is a bad outcome.

> Easier to trust more fundamental aspects of math and physics, but even in those fields, on the bleeding edge many things can change.

That's true. There's this thing though. I can't put my finger on it, so it might be just a benefit of hindsight, but there's a notably different feeling when you reason from current state of knowledge in a correct way, vs. when you abuse it to justify whatever self-serving or atrocious idea you want. The atrocities committed under the label "eugenics" feel very much like the latter. But again, this may be just hindsight, and we may all be vulnerable to a new flavor of that mistake today.

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[0] - Notably, some of which were developed only after those events. E.g. the Nazis weren't the only ones willing to do brutal, lethal scientific experiments on POWs, and, to my understanding, the consensus and principle to not do that was achieved in response to the atrocities of WWII.