Modified Gravity Theory Passes a Critical Test
Help me understand why this is so controversial in the scientific community.  I&#x27;m neither a physicist nor do I study any other relevant fields, so I&#x27;m asking as a &quot;layman&quot; as it were.<p>A cursory search shows that &quot;dark matter&quot; hasn&#x27;t been observed at any point in time. It looks like it&#x27;s a sort-of mathematical placeholder for the &quot;something&quot; that&#x27;s missing that we can&#x27;t see (or can&#x27;t see _yet_.)  Am I correct in my understanding that these alternative theories are trying to prove that there&#x27;s a way to explain these discrepancies without inventing something unobserved?<p>Why is that so controversial?  To me, again as an outside observer, it feels so counter-intuitive to _invent_ a new type of matter you can&#x27;t observe than to just say that your calculation is close but not right and to start over.  Is it not a crutch?<p>If I were to take this approach into another field that has an equal amount of controversy where there is a huge gap in my proof, and say that the cause is an &quot;unseen force&quot; that I just invented to explain how my theory works despite the fact that I can&#x27;t prove in any way that the key part of my theory exists, would I not be laughed out of a room?  How did dark matter become accepted while being invented instead of observed?<p>(I hope my tone isn&#x27;t coming off as mocking.  I&#x27;m genuinely trying to understand without a lot of knowledge on the subject, and I don&#x27;t intend to discredit the current accepted theory nor support the alternative ones, only to understand why the scientific community came to accept the one that is accepted.)