[mwt]

I'm not asking for people to turn off skepticism or blindly trust researchers. It's not disrespectful to be skeptical.

What is disrespectful is not bothering to read what people have to say before dismissing them as liars who are too vested in "the current research direction" and/or money for their perspectives to matter. It only takes reading a few comments to see that's not happening - for starters, people were skeptical of this group's work for a while now.