In a nutshell, it's simply this: Stuff that people actually care about are more likely to be under intense scrutiny and thus more likely correct.

If you sift through the chemical literature, I guarantee you will find scores of papers that talk about compounds and synthesis methods that are false or bogus. It's not really important; no one ever cares about them enough to actually investigate the problems. Remember that passing peer review doesn't mean, "There is no doubt about this work." It just means, "Not obviously wrong; here it is exposed to the world and everyone is invited to look at it more deeply."

It's much the same in even more rigorous fields like math and physics. I have personally found serious errors in at least two math papers that have been published in respectable journals. Neither of them had any citations, otherwise people would have found the errors sooner. I was the first citation.

On the other hand, papers that have thousands of citations are more likely to be correct, simply because more people have looked at them.