There's an old science-fiction short story (I do not recall the author) called "The Silly Season", which refers to a journalist's term for the slow summer months when newspapermen sometimes made up stories like this to keep up readership. Pure frauds, they were meant just to sell papers during a time when real news was scarce.

In this tale, a couple of newsmen make up a story about a Martian invasion. Unfortunately, just as the story is starting to run its course and is being recognized as a fake, REAL Martians invade. The journalists have the evidence, and publish, but they have cried wolf one time too often and nobody believes them. Other reports of the Martian attack are also dismissed by the public and the authorities, and no resistance to the invaders is mounted. By the time everyone realizes what is happening, it is too late and the Martian attack is unstoppable.

This is what really ticks me off about this sort of thing. I believe there are strange and anomalous events of potential enormous significance. But this cottage industry based on lies, the scum that perpetrates it, and the credulous public that makes excuses for them because of their desperate need to believe this crap has destroyed our first line of defense, our trip-wire and long range radar for truth detection. Legitimate reports are just not believed because they are buried in an avalanche of deliberate lies.

This is what really steams me about anomalism, it makes the discovery of real "Irreproducible" phenomena very difficult. If something strange is reported, it will not be believed, and even if the event is not truly anomalous in nature, but just an unusual or unexpected manifestation of a physical law, vital evidence will not be collected, or reported, or believed. Who knows what great discoveries will be missed because no one will bother to look because they've been burned by these low-lifes so many times? Maybe real UFOs, cryptofauna, psychic phenomena, paranormal events or other high strange will slip past us because of the boys that cried wolf.

Of course, these are criminals, they are in it for the money, fraud and hucksters have always been with us. But it is their public, their fans, those who are constantly making excuses for them and dignifying the nonsense because of some childish need to believe who I find unforgiveable; it is these people who keep the hucksters in business, and has led to the distrust of science and the explosion of superstition that we see in modern life. And that is shameful.