One of the distinguishing features of science is its self-correcting nature: when scientists make mistakes (or commit fraud) there is a way to correct that. When a scientist publishes some finding and it is not able to be replicated by other scientists, the article is discredited and may ultimately be retracted.
I have covered one such prominent retraction after it was discovered Deiderik Stapel committed fraud (55 articles were ultimately retracted) in psychology previously in this blog here and here and here and here and here and so on.
Unfortunately, some damage is done before the retractions are made, and of course the retractions mar the careers of the co-investigators.
The New York Times has a list of a few instances of retractions of research studies.
See: Retracted Scientific Studies: A Growing List – NYTimes.com.