Meh. The original definition you gave was: ""Skeptic: (n) A person inclined to question or doubt all accepted opinions"" I don't think an inclination to doubt opinions becomes "denier" of fact and evidence "pretty quickly". Maybe that's just me. >The "vaccine skeptic" movement is an exact mirror image of the "climate skeptic" movement, except one is an idiot disease that afflicts liberals while the other is an idiot disease that afflicts conservatives. Pretending that one side is an idiot while the other is not doesn't show wisdom, it shows you're infected. I'm not sure what you are talking about here, or how you are injecting political ideology into this. Kind of out of left field. Hmm. I was merely pointing out that the definition you gave of skeptic does not seem to describe climate change deniers. I think we need to dispense with the wishy-washy "everybody is an ideologue in their own way" kind of bullshit and have some intellectual honesty here. The campaign to discredit climate change is full of deniers and propagandists. It's much like the coordinated strategy to teach Creationism to children in public schools. These are not 'skeptical' people who just need to be shown the data. Let's not pretend that they are. On any level. Lastly, (not that this has any bearing on the topic really) I am curious why you call vaccine skepticism a 'disease of the left' when the biggest political proponent of that line of thought to date has been Michelle Bachman. There is no doubt that the highest profile proponents have been conservative. Beyond that, it always looked to me that this was a cause taken up mostly by the home-school religious conservative crowd. Not sure what the rank and file believe, but it seems absurd to call this a 'liberal disease' in light of the facts.