Even in hard sciences, there are papers that everyone in the niche knows is false, but fear to speak out about or publish a paper refuting it for fear of their career being damaged.
My wife is a biochemist, and during her PhD they were working on an area of research with a handful of labs publishing about it. One lab in particular was known for a decent amount of questionable publications, but the PI was a big deal and no one would officially question anything. So they would whisper amongst each other and just ignore that paper (and all the additional papers built on top of it) because they all knew it was bullshit.
My wife is a biochemist, and during her PhD they were working on an area of research with a handful of labs publishing about it. One lab in particular was known for a decent amount of questionable publications, but the PI was a big deal and no one would officially question anything. So they would whisper amongst each other and just ignore that paper (and all the additional papers built on top of it) because they all knew it was bullshit.