This dynamic is not confined to this topic obviously but I think it's kind of a tragedy because it would be interesting and great to see some real logical scientific investigation of this stuff you know from all different actors, just like it would to see real investigation of parapsychological phenomenon, but there's too much craziness, stigma and exactly what you said involved for that to happen easily I think.
That to me is a tragedy and major missed opportunity for us humans to learn something to push forward our knowledge at the frontier of what we understand, in the place where science should really excel, and should really be able to be like a shield to go beyond our limitations of ego, group think and emotion... it's the exact place where in these topics it's the weakest.
So the very things that we could understand more about that are so interesting it's like we've crippled ourselves from doing that because of our mass psychology and however these topics have been manipulated by whoever.
I think that this is one of those topics that is pefectly ready for inconclusive bike-shedding: easy to build an opinion and argue about it "safely" - without any risk of losing someone's face when proven wrong due to insufficient data. It's some kind of sport where after the match both sides gp home feeling superior to the other because there's no objective way to establish the winner.