Counterfeit Credibility
I know this is DebateEvolution, not DebateReligion or similar, but I think this is very relevant and useful to discussions here. I've been thinking a lot about the CREDs theory (link to relevant paper) and specifically how it likely applies to conspiracy theories and pseudoscience.
Something I think that the theory does not sufficiently emphasize is that the underlying costs and burdens that lend credibility do not need to be genuine, they merely need to appear so. A person who gives up a $90k/year job as a university professor to instead make $150k/year selling books about crank pseudoscience has not actually sacrificed anything that they valued, and has in fact gained greatly monetarily. But by framing their personal experience as being 'expelled' and 'excluded' from academia, as having 'lost' their job instead of getting a higher paying one, they are able to establish a sort of credibility to those who have fallen for the pseudoscience, because their 'persecution' shows that they are suffering for the belief, which must in turn mean that it is true.
I title this 'counterfeit credibility' because these frauds know exactly what they are doing, know that they were willing and even happy to abandon academic integrity in favor of an easier income stream where all they have to do is lie and grift. They are deliberately manufacturing false credibility, and the more we try to point out their deception, the more 'persecuted' they appear to the faithful, paradoxically increasing their credibility instead of undermining it
I'm not really sure what the solution is, but I think it's important that we take this factor into account and keep it in mind when talking to both the frauds and to the unfortunate marks who have fallen for the fraud.