The only reward ... schadenfreude?

I've alluded in a previous post to the futility of exposing quackery and nonsense. I cannot recall a single instance of someone engaging in quackery or pseudoscientific activities recanting or apologizing for misleading his or her followers. Quacks and charlatans, accepting that they are honest and well-meaning (debatable), are subject to sunken costs and unlikely to recant.

Their faithful followers are subject to confirmation bias, the placebo effect, the sunken cost fallacy, gullibility, anti-science attitudes, being misled by celebrities and so forth. The net result is that one is often just preaching to the converted and hoping that some undecided people will be swayed. The only doubtful reward may be schadenfreude.