These "small errors" were not small, they were gross. The image that you use her shows THE US DESERT SOUTHWEST, not Mars.

Scientists on both sides of the Cold War desperately wanted Mars to be Earth-like, even though it had been demonstrated by about 1910 that this was not the case.

The question then becomes why they deluded themselves, and further why their societies encouraged those delusions.

Continuing, what we have today in the Mars Society is the few remaining people who continue these earlier delusions, and again, the questions have to be "Why are these folks deluding themselves? What are the fundamental drivers in their delusions?"

We also have the institutional delusions of NASA. You have to ask why they do not do fundamental research like applying the new computer image processing techniques to the Viking data, or counting the craters on Mars.
Part of the answer has to lie in bureacratic self-preservation, as the data recovered would simply undermine the delusions on which NASA was founded.

Since it is demonstrated that societies as a whole are capable of sustaining delusions, most of the remaining questions pertain to the delusional mechanisms, and not to Mars.

It's like many African Americans state: "You be tripping on me, man."

EP