One major difference between cryptophysicists and cryptozooligists is that the public is generally able to perceive that the latter are outside the mainstream. Everyone knows from daily experience that there probably aren’t yeti or sea monsters hanging around. Modern physics is abstracted enough from everyday lives and intuition, though, that many people, including some journalists, honestly can’t tell when someone’s waaay out there.
I think people are more familiar with mythology than physics, and the results of relativity and quantum mechanics being so downright weird, it’s harder to say what’s possible and what isn’t. Which makes cryptophysics and crackpottery harder to discern from each other, and from established science. Credulous media doesn’t help.
I wonder if things like string theory have made this worse. No, I don’t — I’m sure it has.