alt Hacker News> it became clear that the journal's editor was too embarrassed
How sad. Admitting and correcting a mistake may feel difficult, but it makes you credible.
As a reader, I would have much greater trust in a journal that solicited criticism and readily published corrections and retractions when warranted.
Unfortunately, academia is subject to the same sorts of social things that anything else is. I regularly see people still bring up a hoax article sent to a journal in 1996 as a reason to dismiss the entire field that one journal publishes in.
Personally, I would agree with you. That's how these things are supposed to work. In practice, people are still people.