One could interpret the increasing skepticism gap that conservatives have for environmental, medical, and social to be entirely accurate given that those are the most politicized fields.

I guess I'd consider myself one of these skeptical conservatives, so I'll comment on my point of view:

I still trust the scientific method. But I don't trust how scientific results are getting reported and used, especially by members of the media and political class.

Not enough skepticism is applied to scientific results by journalists and politicians, despite skepticism--i.e. don't trust, verify--being at the heart of the scientific method. In fact, politicians and journalists are often more bombastic about scientific results than the scientists themselves.

The type of "science" practiced by journalists and politicians is not science at all. It is credentialism dressed up as science.

And because science is still a word with widely held positive feelings, the word is now being used not to promote actual science but to enforce intellectual orthodoxy instead. And it just so happens to enforce intellectual orthodoxies more prevalent among academia, which happens to be left-leaning, which is why conservatives distrust it more.

Unfortunately, it's also leading to a counterproductive backlash against real science. That's why I'm so mad at Fauci, because he probably did more than any one other person in the last decade, to tarnish the reputation of real science.