THere is also a self-correcting mechanism: if the results of a related paper are in contradiction with one's own, then the author typically reads it thoroughly. When to do that and to what extent to read --- that is why (in part) you go through a doctoral program.
WHat remains is misprints and inconsequential errors. The authors of the "study" make something out of nothing. Compounding of errors and all that. Perhaps the underlying paper made some assumptions that the 2nd paper doesn't accurately account for and you're making totally different ones in your own paper. Its the academic version of Telephone.
I agree with your concern, and every scientist I know does. That is why it does not happen: as I mantioned earlier, there are self-correcting mecjanisms of which the authors of the study do not show awareness.
When the "error" persists, as a version of Telephone, its was not an inadvertent error but a limitation of knowlege of the whole community. Correcting such "errors" is just what progress is.
{ There is no difference, incidentally, between not reading Newton's papers and those written in twenty years ago. In hard sciences, excellent reviews appear almost immediately. Having the benefit of time, they are usually better written than the orinal papers, and it is more effective to learn from them. In contrast, less scientific disciplines, such as economics and sociology, still insist on reading the original papers. Precisely because this cannot be done well, they are more likely to have Telephone-like results.