It's cloaked in cultural mumbo jumbo, but I assure you that it is very hard science.
Pulling bad science apart is the best teaching gimmick I know for explaining how good science really works.
As a skeptic, you cannot proclaim any particular scientific endeavor as being a pseudoscience by introducing a flawed interpretation. A priori assumptions are legion, good explanations are rare.
It is odd that, though no one who has never studied chess would dream he could beat a Grand Master, so many strict amateurs with little or no scientific training are convinced they can point out the 'obvious' flaws in Einstein's theories.
Lack of the power to discriminate is no less evident in the sciences, namely in the tenacious life of false and refuted theories. Once come into general credit, they continue to defy truth for centuries. - On Various Subjects
Many wish to believe that the odd is not so odd, the bizarre not so bizarre, and there is little changing of minds once they are set. There are only so many ways to understand the strange and disordered. The Greeks imagined gods to explain what they themselves could not. It is human nature to invent reasons for why the mind shatters, hope plummets, or the will to live dies. Scientific explanations are complicated and, for many, less humanly satisfying than visionary or religious ones. They are also less interesting than explanations based on planetary misalignment, toxins, or childhoods gone awry. There is a disturbing gap between what scientists and doctors know about mental illness and what most people believe.
