What's the difference between dubious and skeptical?

Dubious


Definition:

  • (a.) Doubtful or not settled in opinion; being in doubt; wavering or fluctuating; undetermined.
  • (a.) Occasioning doubt; not clear, or obvious; equivocal; questionable; doubtful; as, a dubious answer.
  • (a.) Of uncertain event or issue; as, in dubious battle.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It’s impossible to automate fully the process of separating truth from falsehood, and it’s dubious to cede such control to for-profit media giants.
  • (2) The draw was enough to take England to the finals in Japan, where Beckham exorcised the demons of four years earlier by scoring the only goal (a dubiously awarded penalty) in the defeat of Argentina.
  • (3) But Blair's address - "history will forgive us" - was a dubious exercise in group therapy: the cheers smacked of pathetic gratitude, as he piously pardoned the legislators, as well as himself, for the catastrophe of Iraq.
  • (4) I drive past buildings that I know, or assume, to house bedsits, their stucco peeling like eczema, their window frames rattling like old bones, and I cannot help myself from picturing the scene within: a dubious pot on an equally dubious single ring, the female in charge of it half-heartedly stirring its contents at the same time as she files her nails, reads an old Vogue, or chats to some distant parent on the telephone.
  • (5) A dubious pattern is emerging of donations through front companies.
  • (6) The relationship of this metabolic aberration to the production of headache still remains dubious for various reasons.
  • (7) During his stints in the Bush and Obama administration Comey has continually taken authoritarian and factually dubious public stances both at odds with responsible public policy and sometimes the law.
  • (8) Today the overestimation of human understanding is reflected in a dogmatic adherence to specific professional or idealogically biased doctrines and in the dubious ideal of a purely empirical science with its limited applicability to mankind.
  • (9) It seems clear that even as we buy cheap clothes with dubious provenance, from an ethical standpoint, people want to do better.
  • (10) Their mechanism is dubious: swelling of mitochondria and intracellular lipidosis, which could signify cellular hypoxia, are rarely present.
  • (11) Imprecise definitions of these complications of necrotizing pancreatitis make inter-institutional comparisons of previously identified data dubious.
  • (12) Critics say this is part of a broader, dubious attempt to appease the Kremlin and boost bilateral trade.
  • (13) In his attempt to justify the unjustifiable, Mr Grieve has clutched at a fragile constitutional doctrine and adopted a deeply dubious legal course.
  • (14) Exporting what appear to be educational success stories is a dubious enterprise, because it is so easy to misread how another country's system works and to discount its cultural background.
  • (15) Observed retrospectively, in some cases death was the result of dubious indication.
  • (16) The Guardian’s own readers’ anthology of dubious deals – crusty rolls 40p, two for £1!
  • (17) Sensitivity (dubious + positive, after exclusion of inadequates) was 0.83 and dependent on histologic type (infiltrating = 0.87, intraductal = 0.68).
  • (18) The vice-president even made repeated trips to CIA headquarters in Langley to bully analysts into producing more hawkish reports, while Rumsfeld’s Pentagon sucked up highly dubious “evidence” from Iraqi exiles and ideological freelancers.
  • (19) This becomes very dubious when they are more numerous.
  • (20) The change in surface tension did not correlate with a change in lung retractive forces or with lung lipid content and was, therefore, of dubious biological significance.

Skeptical


Definition:

  • (a.) Of or pertaining to a sceptic or skepticism; characterized by skepticism; hesitating to admit the certainly of doctrines or principles; doubting of everything.
  • (a.) Doubting or denying the truth of revelation, or the sacred Scriptures.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Far from being depressed, the audience turned into a heaving mass of furious geeks, who roared their anger and vowed that they would not rest until they had brought down the rotten system The "skeptic movement" (always spelt with "k" by the way, to emphasise their distinctiveness) had come to Singh's aid.
  • (2) We intend to treat claims from the most powerful factions with skepticism, not reverence.
  • (3) But the question of what Wray will do after his tenure as FBI director may prompt some skepticism, the former agent said.
  • (4) Of these therapists, 78% reported that they had encountered intense skepticism from fellow professionals.
  • (5) Skeptics have disregarded that even lyophilized preparations of demonstrated activity will lose effect when stored above -80 degrees C. This explains some inconsistencies of results and difficulties in repetition.
  • (6) These stories play on half-truths, like the presence of far-right nationalists at Maidan, and reasonable doubt, like skepticism of western meddling.
  • (7) Louis Pasteur's vaccine against rabies, introduced 100 years ago, was greeted by the American medical community with a mixture of praise and skepticism.
  • (8) But first it has to get to the floor of the House of Representatives – where the leadership, which allowed a floor vote on Amash's amendment this summer, appears to take a more skeptical view.
  • (9) But the euro-skeptic outcome of the European elections posed risks to the single market and the economic recovery was "neither robust nor sufficiently strong".
  • (10) Outside of the potential abuses, there are other reasons to be skeptical of the cheerleading around the housing recovery.
  • (11) Some argue that the public accepts that modern medicine is effective, and others say that as a whole the public is skeptical about its value.
  • (12) PB Everything goes right for the Chargers You can forgive San Diego Chargers fans for being skeptical about their team's chances, and not just because their team only had a 1.6% chance of making the playoffs around Week 13 .
  • (13) Bradley argues that, while young people are generally good at spotting advertising, university prospectuses are different and can slip under the radar of skepticism.
  • (14) The problem of a hermeneutic psychiatry would be to steer between the Scylla of naive realism ignoring the major participation of the psychotherapist on the one hand, and the Charybdis of relativism, nihilism, and hopeless skepticism on the other.
  • (15) The evaluation and management of retinal ischemia from atherosclerotic carotid disease is in a state of flux reflected by the change from emphasizing surgical management in the '70s toward skepticism about the benefit of surgery in the '80s.
  • (16) Changes in nomenclature, while sorely needed, should be undertaken with appropriate skepticism and conservatism and should build upon the foundation provided by DSM-III.
  • (17) Thomas Jefferson, though generally skeptical of the medical treatments of his day, turned to laudanum in his later years to help ease his chronic diarrhea – an affliction that probably helped kill him .
  • (18) Many clinicians and radiotherapists are skeptical about the outcome of using radiosensitizers in patients.
  • (19) Surgeons commonly have reacted with skepticism to the introduction of catheter-based interventional approaches to treating coronary artery disease, prompted apparently, by a desire to protect what had been exclusively their turf.
  • (20) And theirs is not the only near-death story that has raised skeptical eyebrows – even among evangelicals.