Of course the criticism can also apply to Hawking radiation but it wouldn't be a particularly strong or even novel critique. Scientists already understand that

Of course the criticism can also apply to Hawking radiation but it wouldn't be a particularly strong or even novel critique. Scientists already understand that an experimentally unverified prediction in theoretical physics could end up being wrong. If Hawking radiation does end up being wrong, however, it would most definitely result in some groundbreaking insights because Hawking radiation is itself built upon a set of assumptions that have a lot of experimental evidence. The multiple solutions to the black hole information loss problem all depend on a set of assumptions that do not have that same degree of experimental evidence and so the concern is that physicists will converge on the solution that they find most comforting, likely based on ideology or whatever is fashionable, rather than converge on the solution that has the most evidence. The article says that getting actual empirical data to determine which competing solution is correct is virtually impossible. So sure, Hawking radiation can be wrong and we have very little empirical data to support it, but it's not a theory that's competing with any other theories strictly on the basis of math equations derived from a set of assumptions. It's a theory that is almost uniquely derived from a pre-existing set of assumptions that do have a large body of empirical support whereas the solutions to the black hole information loss problem are not.