Nope. Anybody can do the mathematics that the Mayans did. What everyone gets antsy about is that this mystical ancient long gone civilization predicted the end of the world according to the cycles by which it recognized the world's life.
Pure mathematics allows you to continue and divide and multiply numbers in as any many cycles as you wish. The Mayans recognized 13 bak'tuns as the end point of the current cycle. But the zero date at which this cycle began is arbitrary if one bak'tun lasts 5125 years. The end of one cycle can always be near no matter what year you're at because you can place a zero date anywhere you like in history. The one that the Mayans picked happened to coincide with 2012 in a completely different calendar, the Gregorian, that just happened to become the dominant world calendar.
Personally these end of the world ideas to me are people wanting non-Abrahamic evidence to back up this notion of the End Times that's been so firmly ingrained in human culture. That it was the ancient Maya, and not a major religion that also predicted the End Times, just increases the mystical romanticism of it.
What emerges from this were all the New Age ideas popularized in the 60s and 70s: the tenth planet appearing (how can there be a tenth planet when we now recognize only eight?), alien visitors, magnetic reversals, all backed up flimsy pseudoscience.
That and we know it won't happen, because we'll live to 2015 where we'll have flying cars, hoverboards, and Texaco will be the world's largest gas station company, and Marty McFly will change history to save us all.