What I'm criticizing isn't negative book reviews per se; rather, negative book reviews are just one tangible expression of Skepticism as an ideology. I'll be t

What I'm criticizing isn't negative book reviews per se; rather, negative book reviews are just one tangible expression of Skepticism as an ideology. I'll be the first to admit that negative book reviews are highly useful, and most don't even fall within the realm of the Skeptic community. E.g. economics isn't an issue that the skeptic community has much interest in. (Which really says something about the skeptic community in and of itself.) The issue is when you get scientists who spend years researching some issue, and then bunch of jackasses come along and publish a bunch of articles criticizing their methodology without having read the paper or having any idea what the methodology even was. That sort of behavior is endemic in the Skeptic community, and whether it's rational or not it absolutely does discourage people from actually learning stuff that might better themselves or society. I'd give specific examples, but it's so ubiquitous it's not even worth it; most people just don't notice because again, they haven't read the actual stuff that's being criticized.