Former physicist here! I used to work on this stuff. I don't think anyone has ever been a "true believer" in dark matter or dark energy. There was a pattern in

Former physicist here! I used to work on this stuff. I don't think anyone has ever been a "true believer" in dark matter or dark energy. There was a pattern in late-19th- through late-20th-century physics wherein someone noticed something weird, said "hey, if X were true, it'd be kind of weird, but it would explain it all", then people went out and looked for evidence of X. In many, many cases, people did indeed find X, some closely related X', or at least got strong evidence in favor of something else Y, which might have disproved X but at least settled the matter. This has not happened with dark matter or dark energy. The questions still remain open, with no good evidence for any explanations. So... what I'm saying is, don't think less of people for trying to explain things, just because they tried and it didn't work out yet. You're seeing the scientific method play out right now: there is a whole lot of wrong. There was a lot of wrong in the old days, too, but we weren't around to see it; only the successes got passed down.