After attending the “HowTheLightGetsIn” Festival in Hay on Wye in Wales, June 2nd-5th, 2022, I was asked by the Institute for Art and Ideas (iai) to draft a text capturing the current state of the dark matter science. It was published on July 12th, 2022. Here it is:
For a version in Spanish see “Einstein estaba equivocado: necesitamos una nueva teoría del cosmos“. A critique appeared as “Kroupa on Dark Matter vs MOND“.
Related to the above iai publication is the piece that appeared on Nov.25th, 2016, in aeon: “Has dogma derailed the scientific search for dark matter?“. Presentations are available on YouTube: Heidelberg Colloquium (November 2013), “The Vast Polar Structures around the Milky Way and Andromeda“, Golden Webinar (April 2021), “On the Non-Existence of Dark Matter“, and Astronomy on Tap Koeln (March 2022), “Dark Matter Kindergarten Stuff“. In May, 2021, Sabine Hossenfelder explained “Dark Matter, The Situation has Changed“.
While composing the iai text the question returned about how much money is being spent each year on a) salaries of all dark matter people, b) dark matter searches. The draft I had sent to iai (the above text) was immediately accepted and I did not have the opportunity to include the following updated estimate into it. But here it is:
My estimate: There are 12131 IAU members.
If half work on dark matter and if the average salary is 40000 USDollars per year, we have 242 million dollar per year being spent on dark matter research.
If there are currently ten dark matter searches, each costing on average 50 million per year, we have 500 million dollars per year (much of it on salaries for engineers, equipment, astronauts).
That is, the tax-payer is expending something like three-quarter of a billion dollars each year on largely useless “research”. A large fraction of scientific funding thus meanwhile goes into an activity which is based on pure belief contrary to evidence. One might interject that some of the experiments lead to the development of new technology. This would be equivalent to the situation where a state organises, using tax-payer money, a job-programme which employs people to dig many holes. The useful aspect of this would be that the unemployment rate would decrease, but the measure would leave no lasting benefit. In terms of the dark matter problem, it would be advisable to support research projects on non-falsified theories which lead to innovative technologies. Another way to express the above is to say that our modern, 21st century technological civilisation is essentially actively funding religion camouflaged as science with the above amount.
The dark-matter based models were clearly ruled out already in 2010 (read “Local-Group tests of dark-matter concordance cosmology . Towards a new paradigm for structure formation“) and definitely falsified in 2012 (read “The Dark Matter Crisis: Falsification of the Current Standard Model of Cosmology“). Today, ten years later, ample time has passed even for the dimmest scientist to be able to catch up. Given that the arguments against dark matter have not been shown to be invalid, and have in fact multiplied manyfold (see the iai piece above), it is simply not to be understood from a rational point of view why we keep expending so many valuable resources into a falsified theory while, at the same time, suppressing a highly interesting and successful alternative. The scientists who continue pushing for this falsified dark-matter theory are hurting the sciences and are, by ignoring the falsifications, being unscientific. They appear to behave more like ancient Egyptian priests who fervently guard their particular god(s) to thrive on the citizens by faking the ability for communicating with these imaginary deities.
What keeps this system going? The LCDM model is a gold of mine for those, the “LCDM priests”, who are able to sell the dark matter and dark energy stories to the funding agencies. An impression of how this works can be gleaned by watching the Golden Webinars in Astrophysics (see e.g. Post 65). An excellent example of the process is evident the time following 1:13:18 in the Golden Webinars in Astrophysics by Martin Rees as a consequence of Martin Rees suggesting that the non-detection of dark matter is trouble.
Furthermore, the LCDM model is guarded by suppressing fundamental empirical evidence: David Merritt eloquently documents how virtually all important modern textbooks fail to report essential information on galaxies (see Table 1 in Merritt 2017). From my own personal experience I know of significant mobbing within universities and general massive discouragement of young researchers against touching MOND. More than one student working with me have told me that it was recommended by other very senior researcher that they not work with me. When I was younger, I was too told that one may publish on MOND, but only to show it is wrong. It appears that this “guiding” by senior researchers of younger ones may have contributed to the long list of flawed such claims (“The List of Messups” or “The List of Shame”, Post 70). A classical example of continued mis-representation of MOND is the repeated claim that the Bullet Cluster falsifies MOND (this was shown to be wrong already by Angus, Famaey & Zhao 2006, MNRAS ), and a present-day example can be found in the Introduction of a MNRAS publication which dismisses MOND altogether but ends up discovering a trivial MOND result.
It has thus become a perpetually repeating cycle: young scientists are, in nearly all research institutions, not confronted with the essential information, and at best learn about it in the context of fringe science, something better not to touch if a career is desired. They need a post-doctoral or better position, or the one or other prize. To ensure success they do what is needed. In this way the scientific system appears to have become corrupt: despite being ruled out by the evidence (see the iai composition above), dark matter has come to be seen as a non-exotic and established part of physics. For the benefit of ones own career one sticks with dark matter rather than following the “fringe evidence”.
This text is my (Pavel Kroupa’s) responsibility only.
In The Dark Matter Crisis by Moritz Haslbauer, Marcel Pawlowski and Pavel Kroupa. A listing of contents of all contributions is available here.
The Dark Matter Crisis 