I think it's more often just counter signaling that one is better informed or more realistic than whoever wrote the press release or media article, which may very be the case.

Yeah I can't help but imagine these same folks would be more than happy to produce a list of common logical fallacies.

I think skepticism is healthy, rational, and intellectually economical, especially when we're talking about popular media stories. The skeptic isn't harmed by dismissing grandiose headlines about scientific breakthroughs which are selling a false narrative 99.9% of the time (yes, real science is happening, but the media's narrative about the impact of research is pretty much always false), and in the cases where someone is a little too dismissive, they might end up looking like an idiot one day, but layperson skepticism has no bearing on the validity of the claim, no amount of skepticism can overcome the reality on the ground, if it's real it doesn't matter what anyone believes.