A good friend of mine is a microbiology professor, and he believes in the creation account in Genesis. He rarely bothers debating people though. He basically thinks that most so called academics are really not interested in the facts, only their preferred conclusions. I tend to agree with him. But I am a lawyer, and admittedly we tend to see facts that we need to support our conclusions. Anyway, God bless.
Long story short: creationists are whores for publicity; it gives them prestige to further dupe their marks. (These would include the customers to Hamm's little "The-Flintstones-Is-A-Documentary" museum.)
The scientists get nothing out of it but the flim-flam men, like Hamm, get notoriety. They use that notoriety to scam little old ladies out of their pension checks and to push to get school boards to spread their filthy creationist/ID lies to children.