Regarding law or social rules, this question is normative. What you should know is decided by the community (which threatens you by social shaming or legal acts).

If the answer is yes, do we lock all mankind into a unending state of guilt as future generations learn more and more?

These kind of assumptions should not be made because knowledge is mostly cumulative. Situational factors have to be taken into account. Past generations aren't "stupid", they attained the knowledge that was possible at the given time. Would you shame somebody for not knowing much about microbiology because microscopes weren't invented yet in their era?

Nowadays it's possible, for those living in developed countries, to educate themselves in many ways but many people won't use all the possibilities available to them. Whether they should be shamed because of this or not, is probably very bound to what the other people around them values/which perspective we choose to look at it from.

If one thinks our number one priority as a mankind is to find the solutions for many painful questions, like for cure of cancer, then yes, it's pretty "shameable" that some people don't contribute even if their work could help us. But then again, if we look at it from the view-point of individual rights, it's a totally different issue.

Or would this dismiss the nature of the human mind to continue with a 'wrong' hypothesis and thus make some new great discovery?

Great discoveries can sometimes be made in very surprising settings, but that's more an exception than a rule. Usually the knowledge is cumulative and very slowly growing (ostensibly new knowledge can be attained fast, but reaching the certainty of what it actually means is slow).

I think there will always be minds eager to investigate the world we live in, each in their own personal way, and we can't "shame" people into becoming more or less knowledgeable. Whether or not we do that reflects the values and norms of the community.