You stated you reviewed the paper. In the review process you should be able to point out methodological flaws to the editor leading to a rejection or a major revision.

Like I said it's a notion not hard science. For a practical example just take a look at the debunked Wakefield (1998) paper incorrectly linking vaccines to authism. 4000+ citations according to Google Scholar. Other examples are papers on water that has a memory, magical stem cells, arsenic DNA, or non-Mendelian genetics. It's actually quite easy to find examples of papers with very high numbers of citations that should have been printed in a tabloid instead of a scientific journal.

Many scientists are really no better than high school gossipers.