[DCKing]

You seem to be having a weird definition of 'detect'. The only reason the concepts dark matter and dark energy are on the table in the first place is that we seem to be detecting a lot of both. You might not like that scientists can't really explain what it is that's being detected, but for sure it's being detected. There's pretty good summaries of how dark energy and dark matter are being detected on Wikipedia [1][2].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy#Evidence_of_existe... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter#Observational_evid...

People really seem to be having trouble with the fact that dark matter and dark energy are 'placeholder terms' to account for stuff we're actually seeing. With future discoveries in science the terms will be replaced, superseded or perhaps disappear. But observation or 'detection' of both dark matter and dark energy is in fact there.

[mellosouls]

Not "stuff we're actually seeing" technically, more effects we can't explain using our current theories.

Placeholder is the correct term but people tend to leap from "matter" and "energy" to "stuff" (I'm assuming you didn't intend the implication) without understanding those terms (dark matter and dark energy) are preliminary - if well informed - guesses.

[horsawlarway]

Ok, but at the risk of being pedantic...

They are "placeholders" because our models are wrong. Which is fine: all models are wrong, but some models are useful.

And astronomy is particularly vulnerable to this - its models are being applied to make predications at extremes of both time and scale.

But I PROMISE you, we're wrong. We know we're wrong, and we don't know why (and recently there's even been some fair criticism of our models that we use to gauge distance, so no, I'd argue we have not reasonably "detected" anything other than that our models are wrong - STILL USEFUL but wrong)