In article , "Robert L.
Oldershaw" writes:

Certainly no-one can claim that Hawkins has not had the opportunity to
plead his case. Also, even if it turns out that his claims about the
Milky-Way halo are correct, there are still arguments against his claim
that most of the dark matter in the universe is in the form of compact
objects with Jupiter-to-solar masses.

You forgot to mention that there are also other arguments FOR "his
claim that most of the dark matter in the universe is in the form of
compact objects with Jupiter-to-solar masses".

Yes, of course there are, but science is asymmetric: even very many
arguments in favour of a theory can't prove it, but just one argument
against it, in the sense of a failed prediction, can disprove it.

It's like the uniform-deviate--random-number generator: If the K-S test
says the numbers are compatible with a uniform distribution, that is an
argument for it. If someone notices that there is a maximum distance
(less than 1) between successive numbers, then it has been proven not to
be a good random-number generator. You can't say "It's 50-50; one
argument for, one against".

Until then it would behoove us not to marry any hypothetical class of
dark matter candidates, nor to spurn others simply because they
conflict with our expectations. It's ok to root for favorites, but
let's have a level playing field. Hawkins' paper eloquently makes the
case that this this scientific balance and objectivity has been
missing in dark matter research for quite awhile.

The reason most people think that dark matter is some sort of
non-baryonic (and non-neutrino) elementary particle is because there are
good arguments against other candidates, including Hawkins's. Even if
some people root for particle dark matter, you can't criticize their
experiments for looking for it any more than you can criticize Hawkins
for not looking for it.