Thanks, I'll check this out. Historians of early modern science have a favorite example of this, phlogiston.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory

Phlogiston theory is utterly wrong as an explanation for fire, but it "saves the appearances" (conforms to observable physical phenomena) quite well. I think Thomas Kuhn talks about it as an example of a mindset that required a paradigm shift to be thought about differently in Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which seems to be along similar lines as what I gather is Deutsch's Karl Popper-influenced take on scientific knowledge-making.