"Why does MOND get any predictions right? It has had many a priori predictions come true. Why does this happen?"

“I have experienced time and again people dismissing the data because they think MOND is wrong, so I am very consciously drawing a red line between the theory and the data.”

“The concordance model of cosmology, ΛCDM, provides a satisfactory description of the evolution of the universe and the growth of large scale structure. Despite considerable effort, this model does not at present provide a satisfactory description of small scale structure and the dynamics of bound objects like individual galaxies. In contrast, MOND provides a unique and predictively successful description of galaxy dynamics, but is mute on the subject of cosmology. … it is far from obvious that the mass spectrum of galaxy clusters or the power spectrum of galaxies can be explained in MOND, two things that ΛCDM does well. Critical outstanding issues are the development of an acceptable relativistic parent theory for MOND, and the reality of the non-baryonic dark matter of ΛCDM. Do suitable dark matter particles exist, or are they a modern aether?”

“I came to the subject a True Believer in dark matter, but it was MOND that nailed the predictions for the LSB galaxies that I was studying , not any flavor of dark matter. So what I am supposed to conclude?”

“One should not only be truthful, but as complete as possible. It does not suffice to be truthful while leaving unpleasant or unpopular facts unsaid.”

“The current cosmological paradigm, the cold dark matter model with a cosmological constant, requires that the mass-energy of the Universe be dominated by invisible components: dark matter and dark energy. An alternative to these dark components is that the law of gravity be modified on the relevant scales. A test of these ideas is provided by the baryonic Tully-Fisher relation , an empirical relation between the observed mass of a galaxy and its rotation velocity. Here, I report a test using gas rich galaxies for which both axes of the BTFR can be measured independently of the theories being tested and without the systematic uncertainty in stellar mass that affects the same test with star dominated spirals. The data fall precisely where predicted a priori by the modified Newtonian dynamics.”

“My gut reaction to all these questions is negative. But it appears that one set or the other must be answered in the affirmative. Either way, we are missing something fundamental about the nature of our universe.”