I can't speak for other fields but in Neuro there's plenty of this but often one learns how to catch it before using it in your own research, even if it never becomes a matter of public scrutiny. Unfortunately, I can't reassure you that bad research gets caught all the time. However, there's usually at least a couple of experts in a given sub field of Neuro that quickly call BS before something goes too far.
This is an excellent point. A lot of crappy research goes on, and nobody pays it any attention (except, occasionally, when cranks outside the field want to prove that "peer-reviewed research proves the Earth is flat).
It's frankly not worth the effort to debunk a shitty piece of researchin a low-profile journal that's never been cited in a decade.
> in Neuro there's plenty of this but often one learns how to catch it before using it in your own research, even if it never becomes a matter of public scrutiny.
And what happens when it is caught, it is just quietly ignored by the field, right? How often are there retractions?
Depends on the situation. If no one cites it then it drifts into obscurity quickly. If it was actually cited frequently it leads to an investigation of work by all authors on the paper along with a retraction.
