Sure there's smugness -- look at all those scientists who "know" all about global warming, for instance. Or, for that matter, those who dismissed those huge tracts of DNA as "junk."
Scientific smugness is very real, and you're right about its effects: there have always been lots of areas of research that are "not respectable," because the best scientific minds "know better."
The chipping type junk DNA research won't be glamour science until there is some very exciting breakthrough.