Do the flaws in education discredit the discpline being taught?

Randman (and in the past others) have said that because 'overstatements' 'misrepresentations' 'lies', and 'fraud' have made it into the school textbooks (or been taught by teachers, made it into documentaries etc etc), it discredits the discipline (ie evolutionary biology). Whether or not these things are misrepresentations (et al) is not a major element to this debate, but rather whether or not this standard should be applied to other subjects:When I was in school I was taught:That people in the 15th Century thought the earth was flat, that Christopher Columbus proved them wrong, and that he was the first to America: This is clearly false, Eratosthenes calculated the circumferance of the earth about 200 years before Christ was born. People did get to America before Columbus.Does this clearly false representation discredit the discipline of 15th century (and before) history?So, this topic should cover two things.1. Any other examples of things we were taught at school, which scholars of the subject knew (at the time) were inaccurate, grossly wrong, or similar.2. Does this education issue reflect badly on the scholars of the discipline being taught. Is it indicative of a conspiracy, or a cover up or propaganda or anything, or is there a more benign explanation?This message has been edited by Modulous, Thu, 01-December-2005 09:24 PM

cheers for the typo alert.I reckon that Education is the best bet, since I'd like to include any education discipline rather than just science.

Good one! The amount of people I knew who had a hard time when they took up A-Level chemistry is astonishing. One of the big problems they had was the fact the Bohr model was basically thrown out the window.

OK. So how does this differ from, for example: the flat earth fallacy?

I'm not making that claim, take another look at the OP, it is randman (and others) that make this claim. The topic is not about teaching things which later turn out to be false, but teaching things which contempory knowledge in said discipline already knows to be false.This message has been edited by Modulous, Fri, 02-December-2005 01:01 PM

Well, it is, but its an incomplete answer. The square roots of 16 are -4 and 4

Indeed, the manner of your response seemed to indicate that it was me that was overstating a possible conspiracy.