Earlier this summer my family visited the Wright brothers memorial in Kill Devil Hills NC. If you are in the area I recommend going and checking it out.
I saw something there that stuck in my head quite a bit. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. It was a quote by Orville Wright.

“If we worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true really is true, then there would be little hope for advance“

Why did Orville say this? Probably two reasons. #1. At that time people didn’t believe sustained flight was possible, nothing better than Buzz Lightyear flight or falling with style had yet been achieved. #2. The accepted mathematics formula regarding how to calculate lift was wrong, or if you want to be precise it was more misinterpreted or misapplied by the brothers and everyone prior.

Orville and Wilbur Wright were having a very difficult time with their flying machine. The data they had been working off of was wrong for their application. It was damn close but not perfect. After a very disappointing performance with one of their gliders they decided to start over completely and totally from square one. Rather than continue to use the scientific data available at that time to calculate lift they decided to compile their own in search of the proper airfoil needed for enough lift to create sustained flight. As luck would have it the Wright brothers difficulties in determining lift and applying the known formulas at the time would bring about their creation of an airfoil that would forever change the world and make their names immortal in the aviation world.

Link to an in-depth article on this subject

It’s not exactly that the science was wrong, it was actually pretty close but the science was leading them to an answer that was wrong. The application and formulas were applied in a way that resulted in incorrect lift figures and terrible results until the Wright brothers realized something was incorrect and began to try to solve the problem by compiling their own data.