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