Lobotomies and the crazyness of it all! What are we wrong about in science?

Upon reading one of my psychology books I came across something I found that caught my attention. The book was discussing the procedure of doing a lobotomy and how they came about to instilling this procedure worldwide in psychiatric hospitals.

"A prefrontal lobotomy is a procedure where the connections in the prefrontal lobes and the rest of the brain are cut" This is straight from the book. So basically it's a surgery that severes the front of your brain (pieces are actually taken out with an instrument called the leucotome). This procedure was made on patients in the 1940's that were seen as "uncontrolable" in the psychiatric wards. Patients after the surgery had side-affects such as epilepsy, amorality (not being able to distinguish right/wrong), unresponsiveness. 40 000 patients were lobotomized in the United States before it was realized that the procedure was immoral and was doing more damage to the patients, than good.

Now here is the twist. Who thought this was a good idea and why? Lobotomies were deemed as successful based on one experiment which involved a chimpanzee. The scientist who did this experiment was Dr. Egas Moniz and he won a Nobel Prize for it. The chimpanzee prior to the experiment became upset when she made errors in a food-rewarded task. After the lobotomy, she no longer did this (possibly due to the side-affect of non-responsiveness). This sole experiment launched the beginning of it all. Today lobotimies are still being preformed in some countries. Crazy, no?

Anyways I want to know what you think about this matter? And the second question I have is what do you think we are wrong about in science today? It's something I always questioned. What is our era wrong about?