Whatever benefits a knowledge of the history of a discipline may confer on   
current researchers, the precautionary benefits are surely   
enormous.  Barbara Tuchman wrote a book, The March of Folly:  From Troy to   
Vietnam.  One need not even read the book to understand the sentiment that   
seeing how errors were made might be instructive.  Yes, the physicians who   
pooh-pooh the "history of error" are not stupid, as Professor Womack   
observes, but then neither were the physicians who committed the errors of   
the past.  Pride precedeth the fall.  The arrogance of physicians (and the   
rest of us) can only be promoted by contempt for our predecessors and   
ignorance of their history.  The upside for future historians is that   
they'll have plenty of error to write about the present day.  
  
Kevin Hoover