As a contribution, I would report an old dialogue on exactly this issue, between Pareto and Pantaleoni. Pantaleoni in a paper (1898) presented his thesis that the history of doctrines must only contain the true doctrines, and no the history of errors - his was an approach to history as "history of the economic analysis". Pareto's thesis was instead different: "Every theory can be considered in two ways: 1st intrinsically, 2nd regarding those who created it and welcome it. Intrinsically, it is true that the history of false theories is worth little . With regard to those who have created or embraced a theory, history of errors is of great value, because it is the only way we can know about certain dispositions, certain characteristics of man." Luigino Bruni