[cthalupa]

There's a variety of issues with your stance.

1) It's certainly not unheard of for theories have observational or experimental data appears that sends them back to the drawing board for reworking and do eventually get to a consistent state

2) Every other proposed theory to answer these questions ultimately ends up fitting the observational data we have even worse, or doesn't even attempt to explain it

3) Plenty of scientists are still poking at alternative theories and very few scientists love dark matter as an answer. They've just loved every proposed alternative less.

There's no shortage of dark matter detractors. It's just that none of them can come up with a better solution to answer questions about all the things that dark matter does answer. And no, just going "the gods did it" isn't better, because you can't use that as a theory to answer why some things are behaving the way they are, and we can with dark matter. And we do it quite often - far more often than we find weird things like these isolated quasars. But of course you don't get a front page hackernews article every time scientists apply science and things come out consistent with the existing science.

There's not some shadowy cabal of cosmologists doing everything in their power to keep the cult of dark matter alive. There's a bunch of experts who have seen the same arguments raised thousands of times with zero meaningful variation and have gotten tired of having to explain the same things over and over.

[Jevon23]

>1) It's certainly not unheard of for theories have observational or experimental data appears that sends them back to the drawing board for reworking and do eventually get to a consistent state

Sure. But when the socially dominant theory doesn’t fit observations, it’s called “a temporary setback that calls for some reworking”, and when a heterodox theory doesn’t fit observations, it’s called “falling flat on its face”, as you can see in another reply below. That’s not a healthy dynamic.

> There's not some shadowy cabal of cosmologists doing everything in their power to keep the cult of dark matter alive.

No… but curiously, you will get your comment flagged and removed on HN for making such a claim!

[cthalupa]

>and when a heterodox theory doesn’t fit observations, it’s called “falling flat on its face”, as you can see in another reply below. That’s not a healthy dynamic.

Because none of them get even close to explaining as much as dark matter does. This isn't complicated or a radical shift in standards - it's just requiring something be as good as the existing answer to get serious discussion. Pointing out that dark matter isn't perfect isn't an argument for things that are significantly less perfect than dark matter. There are massive gaps between dark matter and alternative theories. Something that worked as well as dark matter did and only struggled with a similar number of outliers wouldn't be said to fall flat on its face - but nothing is even in the same ballpark as it.

The more that can be explaining by an existing theory, the higher the bar is for any alternative theory to displace it. This is just how science has always worked.

>No… but curiously, you will get your comment flagged and removed on HN for making such a claim!

Because conspiracy theories with no evidence or grounding in reality don't make for intellectually stimulating discussion, I imagine.

[mr_mitm]

Ah, yes, of course HN is in bed with Big Cosmology.

[haccount]

We don't need a shadowy cabal when the reflexive action of everyone involved or at the sidelines always rushing out of the woodworks to defend the first-mover established theory. Such as the ongoing thread.

Regarding your issues 1) applied to dark matter, reworked, patched, repatched. Still completely fails and are subject to more ongoing maintenance than a Boeing aircraft. 2) all other theories categorically rejected in a paragraph, while giving dark matter infinite retakes as in 1) is clearly a strong bias towards supporting the party line, not of science.

[cthalupa]

No scientist is saying these alternative theories can't also go back to the drawing board and be reworked until they also explain things.

But if dark matter is 90% of the way there why would we bother with something that is 20% of the way there? Cosmologists and all sorts of physicists will still take to the time to read papers on MOND variation #2754 to see if it's actually making any headway. The problem is, it never really is. Maybe that'll change someday. Scientists are certainly giving it the chance to.

Dark matter is already held to a higher standard than all these other theories. Why should we lower the bar for them?