It is often said that history is “written by the victors”. While this statement is usually referring to the winners of a military or political conflict, a similar effect occurs in the history of science. Physics textbooks, for instance, often describe the development of a theory in a highly abbreviated manner, omitting many of the false starts and wrong turns that were taken before the correct answer was found. While this is perfectly understandable in a textbook (it is rather inefficient to teach students all of the wrong answers before teaching them the right answer), it can lead to an inaccurate and somewhat sterile view of how science actually works.
Science is all about testing ideas via experiment: ideas which match the current experimental evidence can be overturned when new experiments come to light. Even a good scientist will come up with many wrong turns in trying to understand a complicated phenomenon. Unfortunately, many people, including many scientists, feel that science is about ‘always being right’. This attitude can be stifling, as it prevents researchers from suggesting answers for fear of being ‘wrong’.
To counter this attitude, I present the following post: The gallery of failed atomic models.
Skulls in the Stars 