Significance of hidden history

Why do histories of science allow so little space to failures: illusions and delusions of discovery? Is this because science is so much concerned with its findings that how its truths are found is hidden? This is to rate arrivals as far more interesting than journeys (which in the age of boring air travel is too true). Interesting journeys involve decisions along the way, new experiences and ideas, chance events, and some danger. Although the human adventures of the Pickwick Papers are highly informative they would be out of place in a scientific journal. So too are the embarrassments, mistakes, and dodgy assumptions that inspire the best research though they are generally forgotten. A recent book Scientific Blunders (Youngson 2000) describes a number of as-they-turned-out-to-be major errors as reprehensible, even shameful for the enterprise of science. Or at least this is suggested by the titleöthe book itself is more qualified, though it seems hardly fair to call Euclid's parallels axiom, Newton's space, or Lamarckian inheritance blunders. Is this the right way to see science's journeys? Of course, simple errors of arithmetic, or of observation, are to be criticised and no doub