Re: *sniff*
I think Tony *shouldn't* admit that he's wrong, or at least not entirely.
Mind, bear with me a bit here, Tony should go "Well, that didn't work. Oh well, time to think up something better, might have to re-jig a few ideas, refine the plan a bit. When something's not working you try to figure out why and then make the approporiate adjustments."
Mind, i kind of see Tony as a symbol for Modernity, with all the problems and weirdness inherent in that. He is Progress and Self Improvement and all that (Captain America got his powers from others, Spidey got his by accident, mutants were born with theirs... Tony *built* his) He's not just a scientist, like Reed, who is pretty much content to discover stuff for their own sake: He's an engineer, with an engineer's mindset. He wants to make things that work and watch them in the real world.
And he is as much a *social* engineer as a technical one.
And that's the thing, really, that's his biggest flaw and his greatest asset: Cap tries to fight evil where it is, Tony to some degree tries to "fix" problems on a deeper level. Cap is leading by example and inspiration, hoping to make people realize their potential and change their lives. Tony rifles around in the hodgepodge of motivations and incentives and tries to figure out a way to make people act differently.
The problem is of course that Tony isn't as rational as he might think (he has a slew of personal emotional issues) and neither are other people. So he's going to fail spectacularly, quite often. But he'll keep trying, because that's what he does.