To take a trivial example, most of us would like to draw a straight line from Darwin writing The Origin of the Species to the current acceptance of his theory of evolution. We have no particular desire to follow how Darwin's work inspired Francis Galton to study heredity. Unfortunately Galton discovered regression to the mean when he did. Further experiments undermined Darwin's theories as it uncovered evidence for "natural types". The result was that a half-century after Darwin's great book, many scientists doubted Darwin's theories.

But then R. A. Fischer managed to explain the mess with population genetics based on Mendel's theories. "Natural types" disappeared from the literature, and Darwin was back. Today Galton is likely to be remembered as a dilletante who invented the idea of eugenics. And Fischer as a genius in statistics. We retrofit a story with heroes (Darwin and Fischer) and villains (Galton). We skip over the bad parts, and focus on the good.

In the process we forget that Darwin also took it for granted that blacks must be inferior to whites. And that Fischer was also a supporter of eugenics. And that Galton set out to confirm Darwin, then accepted the data that he encountered.

We want a story, not a mess. But history is full of messes. Arranging the right ideas in the right ways involved a whole lot of trial and error that wasn't obvious at the time. While some of us enjoy learning about the history, it actually isn't very helpful for scientists. Because there is little point in learning every wrong idea that people used to hold, only to immediately learn that you can forget it again because it was wrong.

But while that exercise does not help us learn what is currently known, maybe it can help give us more humility about what it is we think we know today?

Of course there's a point, one you suggest yourself. "If great scientists like Darwin could be wrong about X, is there a chance that I'm wrong about Y?"