There's an old proverb that says just about whatever you want it to. Academic Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. I believe that part of what propels science is the thirst for wonder. It's a very powerful emotion.
All children feel it.
Something happens between first and twelfth grade, and it's not just puberty. Not only do the schools and the media not teach much skepticism, there is also little encouragement of this stirring sense of wonder. Science and pseudoscience both arouse that feeling. Poor popularizations of science establish an ecological niche for pseudoscience. All science is either physics or stamp collecting.