Attitude
The vast majority of cosmologists have been reluctant to consider MOND
seriously. I understand this point of view very well, since it is where
I started from myself. We understand cosmology well in the context of
Einstein's General Relativity, there is overwhelming evidence for dark
matter, and MOND itself seems just plain wacky at first glance. Why
invest the intellectual energy to learn so much new for something that
seems so unlikely to succeed?
Like I say, I understand this attitude. However, to answer the last
question first, one can not come to a rational scientific conclusion
from a basis of ignorance. How much do you actually know about MOND?
The average professional cosmologist seems to know "It's wrong!" but that's
about it.
Certainly that's where I started from. I only felt obliged
to learn about it when it succeeded in predicting the
dynamical
properties of low surface brightness galaxies where dark matter models
failed miserably (including my own). That is to say, it raised its ugly
head in my own research, so I felt I could no longer ignore it.
It takes a powerful, direct shock to inspire a rigorous level of
intellectual honesty. Unfortunately, that is not a term synonymous
with cosmological thought over most of human history. So the challenge
becomes:
Can you debate these issues objectively?
