Reflexive contrarianism is far healthier than blind credulity. Skepticism should be the default state, especially for claims of amazing scientific breakthroughs.
The older I get the more I think it's just counter signaling that one is smarter than whoever did this work, which is almost certainly not the case.
I think it's more often just counter signaling that one is better informed or more realistic than whoever wrote the press release or media article, which may very be the case.
Yeah I can't help but imagine these same folks would be more than happy to produce a list of common logical fallacies.
Neither is particularly healthy. Either staying level-headed and analytical or simply admitting ignorance would be healthier. Skeptical/Gullible are two ends of the same crutch for when we are unable or unwilling to do either.
I think skepticism is healthy, rational, and intellectually economical, especially when we're talking about popular media stories. The skeptic isn't harmed by dismissing grandiose headlines about scientific breakthroughs which are selling a false narrative 99.9% of the time (yes, real science is happening, but the media's narrative about the impact of research is pretty much always false), and in the cases where someone is a little too dismissive, they might end up looking like an idiot one day, but layperson skepticism has no bearing on the validity of the claim, no amount of skepticism can overcome the reality on the ground, if it's real it doesn't matter what anyone believes.
I agree, but what I'm seeing here down in the comments isn't merely skepticism, but outright dismissal.