Well, Neil, I hate to contradict you, but let me introduce you to a book called Fabulous Science: Fact and fiction in the history of scientific discovery, by John Waller, a historian of science and medicine, published by the Oxford University Press (2002).
You may be surprised, Neil, that the entire first half of this book carries the section heading Right for the Wrong Reasons. The second half carries the section heading Telling Science as it [really] Was. Which gives you some idea of where this book is headed, and suggests you may find there some of what you’re looking for.
Here, Neil, take a look at this summary on Amazon:
The great biologist Louis Pasteur suppressed ‘awkward’ data because it didn’t support the case he was making. John Snow, the ‘first epidemiologist’ was doing nothing others had not done before. Gregor Mendel, the supposed ‘founder of genetics’ never grasped the fundamental principles of ‘Mendelian’ genetics. Joseph Lister’s famously clean hospital wards were actually notorious dirty. And Einstein’s general relativity was only ‘confirmed’ in 1919 because an eminent British scientist cooked his figures. These are just some of the revelations explored in this book. Drawing on current history of science scholarship, Fabulous Science shows that many of our greatest heroes of science were less than honest about their experimental data and not above using friends in high places to help get their ideas accepted …
… distortions of the historical record mostly arise from our tendency to read the present back into the past. But in many cases, scientists owe their immortality to a combination of astonishing effrontery and their skills as self-promoters.