It's pretty petty to consider intellectuals as part of an elite club. With the alarming decline of intellectualism in America, we need to do everything we can in order to encourage people to think about reality. I don't think of these popular science books as presuming to teach people science, but rather as a subset of philosophy, and I hope that the people who read them think of the books this way also.
This debate is quite similar to the ones about guitar hero vs. real guitar or wii sports vs. real sports. When I play wii tennis, I never have a moment of doubt that I am playing a video game, yet it also encouraged me to start playing real tennis; Certainly not a bad thing.
This is not to say that there don't exist people who do believe that they are learning rigorous science; just the other day when we were learning about conceptual relativity I heard someone remark "were learning all of relativity in this class and it's real hard and mathematical". But, as people have said before, these people will delusion themselves regardless of what field they "study", and if you wish to be rude, you can stop them easily by asking them what a contra variant vector is.
If you have pride in what you do, you will have it regardless of whether people choose to delusion themselves or not.
Also, some of these books are very good for those learning about a subject; for example, the book the heart of mathematics is very non-rigorous, yet it taught me some really useful problem solving techniques and so when learning about the fundamental theorem of arithmetic (and the irrationality of sqrt(2)), which my teacher presented in a different manner, I had a conceptual basis and two methods for proving these theorems. Conceptual preparation can be half the battle in learning a subject; I would be willing to wager that a person who had read a conceptual science book would be quite a bit better prepared for a subsequent rigorous course in the subject.
P.S. WarPhalange: I think there is a quote which may apply to your "game": "Praise in public, correct in private" Publilius Syrus.
