Not only effort: millions and millions of public and private dollars wasted on followup research on a false premise, all so that an author could get citations. What a cost.
This of course is pure speculation
It does lend to an interesting thought experiment, though.
Imagine the researchers were right after all. They just needed more time, and so they faked some results. We might have ended up with an underdog/feel-good movie about how the researchers bravely persevered in spite of the drying up of their funding.