I'm trying hard to be precise, but I could always do better.
MOND the physical hypothesis is perfectly good science, whether it turns out to match reality or not. My issue is with MOND the meme, the complex of beliefs among non-physicists (like me) that MOND explains "dark matter"[0] without matter which is dark, whose fitness isn't really based on the success of MOND-the-model.
I say MOND-the-meme is pseudoskeptical because it a) manufactures disbelief by misrepresenting a subject and then b) provides a "skeptical" alternative in order to appeal to skeptics which c) does not itself stand up to skepticism because (a) was a strawman and (b) was motivated reasoning. It survives because it makes you feel smart, not because it's sound or valid or the MOND hypothesis is true.
Accepting MOND-the-meme would still be problematic even if the MOND hypothesis was overwhelmingly confirmed tomorrow.
[0] Taking full advantage of the ambiguity between "dark matter" as the name for observations, one hypothesis explaining them, and an overall cosmological model.
I think the jury is still out on that, and, like I said, it has actually made predictions which is more than what you can say about LCDM, which as far as I can tell has only made post-hoc rationalizations.
MOND is unsuccessful in the broadest sense because the jury is still out. It hasn't failed, and does have support, but hasn't managed to convince the experts that its individual successes translate into overall success as a model.
Narrowing the meaning of "success" can lead (me, at least) into a philosophical morass about what really are predictions, what is parsimonious, how do we science, why even is anything. Sorry, maybe it's not fair, but I don't really want to go there.
You shouldn't have said successful, because that implies a finality to the judgement. There are definitely "dead" scientific theories (like phlogiston) and MOND is far from that, it's making highly competitive predictions, it just seems for some reason that the contemporary culture of science is overly resistant to it. I have no idea why.
Wow, no offense, but this is an insane level of mental hoops to jump through to insult people who are putting forward the MOND hypothesis. It’s almost invisible, but I think it’s there.
I guess I'm still not being clear. I'm not insulting MOND or people who like it, at least not on purpose. That's just absolutely not my goal. At all.
Rereading my first comment, I'm not happy with the tone. I wrote it quickly on a phone and didn't get it right. I was honestly just making observations without judgement, but it doesn't sound that way.
The short version is that laypeople with a skeptical bent like to say "eh I don't believe in dark matter, those silly physicists are inventing particles that aren't there, MOND solves the problem without extra particles so MOND is probably right."
It's an easy way to be "skeptical" without really knowing anything about the relative success of the two theories. Because MOND is an underdog theory, you can feel like a skeptic questioning dogma by supporting it... even if you don't really know much about the merits.
MOND the physical hypothesis is perfectly good science, whether it turns out to match reality or not. My issue is with MOND the meme, the complex of beliefs among non-physicists (like me) that MOND explains "dark matter"[0] without matter which is dark, whose fitness isn't really based on the success of MOND-the-model.
I say MOND-the-meme is pseudoskeptical because it a) manufactures disbelief by misrepresenting a subject and then b) provides a "skeptical" alternative in order to appeal to skeptics which c) does not itself stand up to skepticism because (a) was a strawman and (b) was motivated reasoning. It survives because it makes you feel smart, not because it's sound or valid or the MOND hypothesis is true.
Accepting MOND-the-meme would still be problematic even if the MOND hypothesis was overwhelmingly confirmed tomorrow.
[0] Taking full advantage of the ambiguity between "dark matter" as the name for observations, one hypothesis explaining them, and an overall cosmological model.