Indeed, it baffles me why people think this is some how shocking while the same thing happens all the time even in the hard sciences. There was a famous case of some physicists who were just copying older articles and were caught out years later, a comp sci paper that was generated artificially. In a more broader context there is a massive repeatability problem in experiments due to the fact that negative findings are viewed poorly and hard to publish so natural selection means that false positives have a higher publication rate, before you get to human nature to be selective with results or twist data.
Peer-review is a minimal part of the scientific process in fact the trend now is to do away with it all together. It serves mostly as the lowest level of proof reading paper. Ensuring there is a good English and logical structure/messages about its most important function, along with a rough analysis of methodology or results to check for glaringly obvious errors.
The Scientific methodology doesn't rely on peer-review, it relies on a process whereby valid scientific findings are repeatedly, verified, hypotheses are developed, supported, reformulated or rejected. Over time, by countless independent scientist, often with conflicting opinions and hypotheses, a more coherence hypothesis with well grounded theoretical and empirical backing develops, and eventually might become an accepted theory .
Some morons set out to purposely deceive in a process that is not designed to protect against deception in a a relatively poor journal. This isn't news. It would only be interesting if it wasn't caught out and some how developed into an academic foundation with thousands of supporting articles and academics.
