The problem with scientists and the history of science is...

... that scientists are not historians, as John Wilkins points out. (Blake has also written a good post on this topic.) It is easy (and even preferable) to clearly distinguish the good guys from the bad guys, and sweeping generalizations about old ideas are often included to give clout to modern notions.

I found this out first hand while researching T.H. Huxley's work on the connection between birds and reptiles. From popular books to technical papers, many scientists (including some of the most prominent names working on feathered dinosaurs) have said that Huxley first proposed that birds evolved from dinosaurs, typically listing one paper and then moving on. I get the feeling that such attempts are little more than hat-tips to Huxley that try to establish that what we now know about the relationship between dinosaurs and birds has long been recognized, but the truth of the matter is much more complex.

I will not detail what I found here (you'll have to wait for the paper, sorry), but suffice it to say that Huxley did not interpret Archaeopteryx as an important transitional form, nor did he say that birds had specifically evolved from dinosaurs. Yet Huxley's supposed preference for an origin of birds among dinosaurs is a common story that gets rehashed over and over again by some professional paleontologists.

What aggravates me is that, for some, the "textbook cardboard" approach is good enough. Fables and legends are useful, the argument goes, and those truly interested will look up the real information later. I am not convinced that this is the case, and I think that the perpetuation of mythical Whig histories is pretty lazy. The real histories are just as exciting, interesting, and able to be shaped into narratives as the historical legends we sometimes conjure up. Again, I've personally discovered this to be so while working on my book, as I have often had to go back and replace textbook cardboard with more accurate information. When I did so I often found the narrative to be better and stronger than the simplistic, hand-me-down version.

Generally, though, I don't see much of a push for scientists to go back and look up what earlier researchers actually said or did until someone comes along and says "Hey, this isn't right." (There are some who have made an effort to do this, however, and I do not want to over-generalize and say that all scientists care little for more accurate histories.) There is still a divide between people who study the history of science and scientists themselves. As John writes;

But mostly I dislike textbook history because it just annoys the hell out of me. If someone in the past had something good to say, or even was wrong but not in a simplistic manner, then they should be remembered for saying it they way they actually did, and not the way it suits some modern scientists to put it.

In terms of what gets taught in classrooms (particularly at the college level), I become particularly frustrated with textbook cardboard because it is so easy to correct it. Minutely-detailed lectures about the development of evolutionary thought may be too time-consuming and beyond the scope of a given course, for instance, but if teachers are going to talk about the history of science I'd prefer if they did it right. It isn't that difficult to grasp. Yet too often the excuse of "Well, I'm not a historian" is heard and the same stories are continually passed down.