No, the conspiracy doesn't belong here. There's a vibrant mainstream world trying to pin down or disprove dark matter, but there's a phenotype of cynic that's really common here on HN that precisely deserves the snark - low effort comments dismissing mainstream research while clearly not understanding it.
I think that mainstream research in physics has lost a lot of credibility after spending decades pursuing things like string theories and super symmetry. Not that it was anything wrong with any of those at first, but they weren't presented as hypotheses, they dominated research way too much, and it took way to long to admit they were dead ends (most still haven't, but instead silently started working on different stuff).
Broad brush much? You're also completely ignoring the difference between experimental and theoretical physics, which... both have a lot of things to say about the search for dark matter.
Like... sure, no field is perfect, but saying that a whole gigantic collection of specialties has "lost a lot of credibility" after one particular mathematical framework took up (in your opinion) too much oxygen strikes me as lazy and not particularly useful.
So - why does this add to the discussion? How would I be better served by focusing on your disappointment than trying to learn what actual researchers are saying and doing? Why should I trust in the cynicism of HN comments when I can go read about what experts are actually focusing on/debating/excited about? There's so much new data coming in these days, pedantic "skeptics" just strike me as increasingly annoying and useless.
You classify them as *pedantic* skeptics, while I say their skepticism is well founded. I used to be experimental physicist myself and have followed how, in particular high energy, physics has been presented by practitioners for at least three decades. And after seeing how all that focus and excitement have been unfounded more than a few times, you do get jaded.
Lots of people, physicists included, have criticized the funding allocation for high energy physics... that wasn't what we were talking about. Ironically, a lot of that criticism points out that clever astrophysical studies can be done more cheaply, including studies that work towards constraining what we loosely call dark matter.
No offense, but you seem to be changing the subject (former experimental physicist or no).
No offence, but I haven't changed the subject. I'm not talking about the cost of accelerators when I talk about HEP in this case, I talk about predictions of supersymmetry and new exotic particles that might actually make dark matter a real theory. You see, it's all part of the same.
They've been doing this for 40 years and at this point it's just sad and pathological science.