Ok, I guess what I mean is that it's suspicious that it maps onto a preexisting notion held by the general population, in the same way that it would be suspicious for psychology research to apparently show the existence of demon possession (which humans have in fact believed in). I wouldn't find it suspicious if it mapped onto a notion of someone with demonstrated exceptional ability to read and connect with people (e.g. Bill Clinton).

The way scientific progress occurs is by developing progressively more refined understandings of what's going on: for example, passing from the Ptolemaic model of the stars and planets to the Copernican model to the Newtonian model to Einstein's theory of general relativity. One can't hope to understand reality if one isn't flexible enough to recognize that things might be very different from how they initially appear.