> actively working on my PhD

Not paid enough to afford an armchair, you mean? :)

> it best explains our current observations

I always figured dark matter to be nonsense because nobody ever listed any said observations, but only ever parroted that line. Even xkcd is guilty of it https://xkcd.com/1758

So better start giving out examples or you won't ever convince anyone. I'll start. The one that convinced me is the Bullet Cluster collision where it seems that regular matter collided and slowed down but something else which contributes most to the overall mass passed right through without interacting at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_Cluster#Significance_to...