[brabel]

> There's a lesson here in the ability to form consistent, empirical, wrong theories given even slightly wrong inputs.

Is this really a lesson? Every single theory evolved this way, starting with an almost certainly naive hypothesis, then with incomplete evidence leading to bad conclusions, then as better data came in, adjustments to the theory until we had something that fit the evidence to a high degree (though it's almost always possible further adjustments are necessary even when it looks like we've found the perfect theory: e.g. Newton physics VS relativity).

I think you would be hard pressed to find any theory that did NOT evolve in this exact manner.

[WhitneyLand]

Yes it’s a big lesson, not so much in noticing other examples in the past but in thinking critically about present day conjectures yet to be resolved.

So many smart, credible people build up lines of thinking (a necessary step and best that can be done presently) around subjects. These get discussed, reported on, worked with, and very easily become conventional wisdom. Yet so often they turn out to be way off course.

[verzali]

I think the lesson should be that many of our own models are also probably wrong in ways that might look very silly in 50 years time.

Science should always be a humbling field.

[rachofsunshine]

I think it is a lesson, yes. It's not a lesson to avoid trying to form theories. It's a lesson in the importance of out-of-model error and in assigning low confidence to arguments with many premises and logical steps along the way, because each premise and each step creates new ways to introduce small propagating errors.