What kind of weirdos are economists?

After a fascinating lecture about canned soup from an economist, one may ask - "what kind of weirdos are economists?"
This guy had studied canned soup sales and pricing in Canada, at the expense of a large German supermarket. You can understand why a supermarket chain might pay for it. There were 200 kinds of canned soup sold in Canada during the study period. With some clever maths, and heaps of numbers, he could calculate not only things such as which flavours were most popular (chicken!), and the popularity of brands, but possible opportunities for increasing prices.
Economists can have a lot of fun using such trivia to show how gullible other people can be. Tim Harford (The Undercover economist) for example with one story "Paying not to go to the gym" -
http://timharford.com/2006/03/paying-not-to-go-to-the-gym/

But people, including economists, who live in glass houses should not throw stones. Tim also felt compelled to defend economists, who themselves can sometimes be too clever by half -

http://timharford.com/2014/04/economists-arent-all-bad/