My point wasn't about the making of hypotheses to account for discrepancies, but the way in which this particular one isn't one for which confirmatory evidence can, by virtue of the theory itself, be found - and that in this instance what was required was a theoretical review as opposed to the hypothesis of a new variable. And so it turns out - it now appears that the discrepancy is explicable by flaws in theory as opposed to all this dark nonsense.
Above all it's about that this hypothesis is generally portrayed as verified theory.
I wasn't aware the discrepancy had an alternative explanation that nullified dark matter? Of course every time there's a difference between observation and prediction, the current theories have to either be wrong or incomplete.
I was still under the impression that dark matter was widely accepted as a working hypothesis. I'll ask the physicists later.
As for its wide acceptance as fact, I think the media is to blame: they like to draw pretty diagrams and sensationalise it all. That Pullman bloke is the worst for doing it - sentient fundamental particles indeed! :sarcasm:
What we used to call 'Martin's Constant' in my early days in computing (COBOL-bashing on a battered old NCR Century 100). After a colleague who often made use of them. An arbitrary constant introduced into a calculation, not because anybody knows why it works but because it produces the result the management want to see.
There's plenty of them in theories derived from classical assumptions. Quantum mechanics really tidies things up
