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Skepticism isn't a rejection of statements based on what you can observe, but based on what cannot be explained. It is not that you are philosophically skeptical of a belief because you have never seen it demonstrated in real terms, but rather because the explanation of such a belief is not falsifiable. 

Sometimes skeptics seems like dumb people who are too afraid to be wrong, so they apply skepticism to everything as to lower their chances of being wrong about unknowns. That's "denial" hindering you, not skepticism.

A skeptic should have no problem understanding that electrons are real if presented with the empirical scientific evidence that establishes its existence. Even if such knowledge is second hand (books, classes, lectures), in order to reject the knowledge, a true skeptic would have to ask why is that the second hand knowledge is invalid or unsound? Not just assume it is because it is not direct knowledge.

Rejection of anything other than what you can directly observe is a sort of naive realism, which oddly is closer related to idealism or objective idealism than any other branch of realism. It is a sort of superficial investigation into reality through direct sense. It's also closely related to phenomenology which makes claims of being scientific and analytical, but is also anti-reductionist and therefore not related to scientific realism or physicalism in any way. It's incompatible with physics.

Think of it this way: If some woman told you her breasts were real, but to you, they looked way too perfect to be real, and you told her they were fake ... that would be denialism.

But if some woman told you her breasts were real, but to you, they looked way too perfect to be real, so you told her you would have to feel them first to believe it ... that would be skepticism.