Can a published well-received research paper contain misprints?

Yes, and there are a lot of reasons for errors. There is also a large machinery for keeping errors out, but they fail regularly enough. Sometimes the error is a misunderstanding by a copy editor. In printed work, even by the printer's employees.

But the biggest issue is probably how hard it is for people to proof read their own material. I struggle with this constantly in my own writing. Once you put a mistake into a paper, you are likely to read over it when proof reading. You tend to "see" what you think should be there, not what actually is there. One of the purposes of intelligent reviewers is to catch such things. But we are all human and the mistakes we make we often repeat.

If the "error" isn't thought of as serious to understanding by a reader, they may just ignore it. Or even, might "see" what they expect to see in such things as formulae. Especially if they are commonly used.

There was once a version of the Bible printed in which, among the other commandments it was stated: Thou shalt commit adultery. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_Bible

No work is perfect; mistakes are everywhere: There's a reasonable chance the equation contains a typo, especially since a different, presumably correct equation is used elsewhere.

You can confirm in various ways. I suggest you start by looking at publications that followed the thesis. You may find the author has already corrected errors. Next, you could email the author: Open by summarising your interest in the equation, explain that the equation is used differently and you suspect a typo, and ask whether that's the case.

Things like that easily happen as the other answers already say. I would like to add one example: The only error I encountered so far in my own diploma thesis is like that: I started with an idea and first implemented the calculations numerically in a way that the underlying equation was hidden quite well. When I wrote up the thesis, I tried to extract the equation and swapped one variable with another. The calculations were still correct, of course. I only found that out recently because I needed the equation again. Nobody of the people involved at the time noticed, probably also because the equation was embedded into a text describing the general idea correctly.