They made the same complaints about Carl Sagan
It's as much professional jealousy and protecting the scientific
"priesthood" for the chosen few as much as anything else.
Without guys like Feynman and Sagan, there probably wouldn't be as
much support for science, or as many scientists, relatively few that
there are. But a fair number of professional scientists continue not to
appreciate that, nor do they possess the ability to properly share what
they do with the general public, though thanks to things like the Internet
that is starting to change a bit.