My situation was very similar: I got some kind of sense of what the "real thing" was from my dad who was doing research in cognitive psychology and HCI while I

My situation was very similar: I got some kind of sense of what the "real thing" was from my dad who was doing research in cognitive psychology and HCI while I was growing up. That may be an ingredient in what creates perspectives like ours: you have to have some exposure to actual scientific thought processes to get a sense that you're being served something inferior when it comes up. Edit: I guess one thing that was kinda weird about my situation was that my dad's area of research wasn't in the set of mainstream sciences taught in public schools, so the 'official' sciences always remained separate in my mind until much later. Meanwhile I assumed chemistry/physics/biology/math were all just extremely dull.