[tjradcliffe]

Dark matter is no more a kludge than phlogiston, or the lumineferous aether, or neutrinos. All of them were introduced as novel entities to explain experimental phenomena. The first two turn out not to exist, the latter does: http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1801

Calling them kludges is to mistake the basic process of science for a hack.

There are any number of confirmatory observations that fit the dark matter model, just as there were any number of confirmatory observations that fit the neutrio model. It's just that we haven't observed any dark matter particle interactions directly, just as we hadn't observed any neutrino interactions directly before Reines' experiment.

It may be that dark matter turns out not to exist, and then we will know it was wrong. Until then it is perfectly ordinary science working in perfectly ordinary ways as it has been for over a century.