If one fraudulent paper can derail a field that much, it's only because we have other, larger problems. Such as funding hegemony with the big researchers and big labs.
The nature of science is that there are a lot of papers. Not all are replicated but generally “we pursued this direction for 16 years” type of hypothesis are based on many results, which acts as an error correcting code on mistakes and fraud — and is exactly how the system is supposed to work.
How much time could have been saved towards an effective treatment? It could be as high as a decade, but of course more likely it was zero years. I averaged it out to 1 year.
Now suppose you think that 1 year is orders of magnitude too high, and that in expectation it averages out to a 1 day delay. Even then, I estimate 100,000 QALYs would be lost, making this a tragically high impact case of misconduct.
--- Final point: Nobody doubts that science is error correcting. The point is that the errors are corrected far too slowly and many never get corrected at all. It's incredibly hard to develop good theories when you know that 30-50% of the results in your lit review are false.
What is the precise, singular meaning (or implementation) of "science is error correcting"?
Is there one?
Still these people are criminals and clearly need to be treated as such. To say there are larger problems doesn't at all diminish the need to deal with criminals as we do in ALL walks of life.