> There's a lesson here in the ability to form consistent, empirical, wrong theories given even slightly wrong inputs.

Is this really a lesson? Every single theory evolved this way, starting with an almost certainly naive hypothesis, then with incomplete evidence leading to bad conclusions, then as better data came in, adjustments to the theory until we had something that fit the evidence to a high degree (though it's almost always possible further adjustments are necessary even when it looks like we've found the perfect theory: e.g. Newton physics VS relativity).

I think you would be hard pressed to find any theory that did NOT evolve in this exact manner.