Issues in the Investigations of the Dark Matter Phenomenon in Galaxies: Parcere Personis, Dicere de Vitiis

TL;DR

This paper critically examines the challenges and assumptions in studying galaxy kinematics to understand dark matter, emphasizing that its nature must be inferred through reverse engineering observational data rather than theoretical predictions.

Contribution

It highlights the importance of careful assumptions and practices in dark matter research, advocating for a reverse engineering approach to infer dark matter properties from observations.

Findings

Galaxy kinematics provide crucial insights into dark matter properties.

Careful consideration of assumptions is essential in dark matter investigations.

Inferring dark matter nature requires reverse engineering observational data.

Abstract

It is always more evident that the kinematics of galaxies provide us with unique information on the Nature of the dark particles and on the properties of the galaxy Dark Matter (DM) halos. However, in investigating this topic, we have to be very careful about certain issues related to the assumptions that we take or to the practices that we follow. Here, we critically discuss such issues, that, today, result of fundamental importance, in that we have realized that the Nature of the DM will be not provided by The Theory but, has to be inferred by reverse engineering the observational scenario.