re: It is difficult to understand believers
"The difference between a pseudoscientist and a real one though, is that a real scientist will drop a fuzzy theory like a hot potato if something better and simpler that fits the facts comes along. "
Absolutely. The scientists I have admired the most are the ones who (I am sure with great pain) let decades of their work go when their field was revolutionized by a new development. Whole lifetimes of work can be rendered as irrelevant to science with a single revolutionary paper.
But that IS the 'way' of things in science, and the true scientist does not ignore this fact.
D