In that case I may have misunderstood your point. What I mean is that, for a paper with 100+ citations (which, in some fields, is not rare), most of them are not verified by the authors.

> In the past decade, I've spent probably 70% of my time on scientific research. At this moment I'm procrastinating from writing a letter of support on a grant. What, in particular, do you think I'm unrealistically rosy about?

The self-correcting nature of the process is very slow in most cases. Bad results end up being forgotten for minor findings, but for things of mild interest, it may linger far longer.