Why we should be more skeptical

I personally adopt a variant of skeptical invariantism, where I think that the standards of knowledge are so high to the point of being near unattainable. In order for us to know that P we have to be able to eliminate all possibilities where P does not hold. Thus in order for us to know that we have hands, we must be able to eliminate cases where we are dreaming, or cases where we are being tricked by an evil demon. Nevertheless, I believe we can still use the notion of knowledge in ordinary contexts by validly asserting that we have knowledge even though we do not. In this sense, our usage of the knowledge term is more relaxed than the extreme standards I have set.

Still, I believe that even in terms of assertions, we should be much more careful than we currently are. It is promising to see around me that people are demanding some sort of reasoning before they are willing to accept new things. They have an initial level of skepticism, and they demand evidence before accepting claims. However I am worried that they approach such evidence with too much charity. 

We are taught about the scientific method, which focuses on evidence and critical analysis. How we should only accept things on the basis of evidence and justification. This, it is said grounds scientific discoveries. Whilst this is certainly true, I worry that people are buying into scientific positivism and are overestimating the degree of certainty in such knowledge assertions. Science is powerful, but it is still inductive reasoning. We consider the empirical data and we reason that a given theory provides and the most convincing explanation of the theory. These theories are peer reviewed by professional academics in the field who have spent decades studying them. Yet this does not mean that the theory is correct, or true.

We are often far too willing to take such scientific assertions as factual when they are not. We make claims that the theory of evolution is true or that global warming is real when we can not be certain of either. Now this is not to say that we are unjustified in supporting such theories; we have considerable reason to do so. I think people act in this way as a type of over-reaction to others who doubt sciences rigour yet seem willing to support baseless claims. To people who are scared of vaccines on the grounds of a questionable study, but are willing to embrace alternative medicines that may have no justification. I can see how It must be frustrating to deal with such cases of varying standards. I personally find it frustrating simply to see how low such standards are.

Admittedly, I would rather people blindly follow science than ignore it entirely. Yet, we can do much better with just a little bit more skepticism. Things are rarely as simple as they might seem, and the current explanation is not necessarily the best one. Perhaps depressingly, we ought to really consider why we actually believe in certain claims. Is it because we have seen the evidence ourselves, or are we blindly trusting the words of supposed experts, who we think to have knowledge?