Edited to add: Wrote this, posted it- and saw Doctor Franger's post (above). I think we were thinking along similar lines.
here's some more examples of skeptics presenting opinions as facts in the face of overwhelming evidence.
"X-rays will prove to be a hoax." - Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, 1883
"When the Paris Exhibition [of 1878] closes, electric light will close with it and no more will be heard of it." - Oxford professor Erasmus Wilson
A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth's atmosphere." — New York Times, 1936
There is little hope of discovering new species of large quadrupeds.- Cuvier - 1812
Going off-topic, but I'm not convinced that the above four sources are "skeptics" in the modern sense, or even would have been considered the equivalent of sceptics in their own day.
Presumably both Lord Kelvin (William Thompson) and Georges Cuvier attempted to base their work on empirical evidence, but they were men of their times.
Kelvin, a devout Christian, believed the Earth was too young for Darwinian evolution to be an explanation of humanity's origins. He believed in a form of theistically-guided evolution.
Cuvier (who pre-dates Darwin) didn't believe in evolution (or any other mechanism of a species' characteristics changing over time)
at all:
External Quote:
The harshness of his criticism and the strength of his reputation, however, continued to discourage naturalists from speculating about the gradual transmutation of species, until
Charles Darwin published
On the Origin of Species more than two decades after Cuvier's death
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Cuvier
Cuvier was the vice-president of the Paris Bible Society, and believed all humans were descended from the Biblical Adam;
Adam and Eve were Caucasians (of course).
Erasmus Wilson (William James Erasmus Wilson) was a surgeon who founded the Hunterian Museum of medical specimens.
He also studied dermatology, and advocated the building of wash-houses and public baths in Britain.
Arguably he over-estimated the efficacy of bathing, becoming an advocate for "hydropathy", a sort of pseudo-scientific precursor to hydrotherapy which made great claims for the curative powers of water treatments and vapour "baths".
Why his opinions about electric lighting were recorded, I don't know.
I don't know enough about
The New York Times to comment other than I've not heard of it mentioned as a "skeptical" journal.