I think what you are driving at here, and I quite agree, is that what science needs to do is actually quite a bit more sophisticated than the binary operation "falsify/confirm". Many valid points have already been made above, but perhaps what I might add that has not been directly stated is that the concept of "falsification" must be seen in a direct context of what the original purpose was of the theory being falsified. If the purpose of the idea of ESP was to be able to detect it reliably, and possibly control it for some use, then it has been falsified in the "dead" sense of the word. If its purpose was to provide a vocabulary whereby we could fruitfully begin to investigate what we still don't know about the mind, then it could have been completely successful despite not being technologically applied (that it also failed in the latter pursuit is more the issue at hand, in the case of ESP). The point is, science is a process, not a destination, and models should be viewed in that same light.

This is never more true that for CDM-- what is the purpose of the CDM model? To say it is intended as a way of changing our view of our universe, as though it could transport our minds instantly into a position of knowledge, would be to substantially oversell its current place in astronomy. Really, it is intended as a way of answering the question "if we had to characterize all the shortcomings of our current view in the smallest possible space, what concept could fill that space". It's not time to change our view of the universe, it's time to recognize why we will still need changes in that view, and what we need is help finding what it is we have yet to discover that will change our view of the universe.

CDM is more like a set of instructions for following that course, than it is like a specific entity. As such, it cannot be criticized on the grounds that it does not answer all questions and has not been directly detected-- as long as it continues to make sense of many observations and motivate new ones, as long as it continues to give us a good perspective on what are the problems that don't make sense with other observations, and as long as it continues to guide our ideas of what types of substances we might look for to discover it, then it is serving its purpose admirably. We will know that CDM is dead only when we go a decade with no new mysterious observational results that it lends any insight into, and no new ideas of what experiments might detect it. That's not quite the same as "falsifying" a theory, it's closer to recognizing when a theory has become "dead weight". None of the criticisms leveled by dgruss23 ascend to that level, that I can see.

In summary, ESP is dead weight, ID is dead weight, and ufology is dead weight, not because any of these have been falsified (that would be impossible), but rather because none of them have proven useful for anything but getting books sold. Newton's gravity, on the other hand, has been "falsified", yet it is not dead weight, because it continues to be useful and we know exactly when we can use it and when we cannot. In short, it accomplishes a scientific purpose, while those others do not. For the time being, CDM also accomplishes its purpose. That may not always be so, but at the moment dgruss23's objections are premature (not completely invalid, just premature). I say this not to turn the thread into a discussion about CDM, as I know that is not Nereid's purpose, but rather to draw out the difference between what is "the truth" that could be "falsified" and what is merely productive-- and when we should or should not abandon hope of same.

This would be a perfect example of what I'm talking about. One need only imagine that the neutrino cross section was 1000 times smaller than it is. Perhaps that could be, perhaps some tinkering could preserve the universe as we know it but the neutrino would still not be detected today. Would we then say that conservation of energy was "falsified"? No, I don't think so-- not as long as the concept was still useful for suggesting ways we might look for missing particles, or for investigating the boundaries of when it applied and when it didn't. To be useful, a chainsaw doesn't have to be able to chop onions, it merely has to come with instructions about what it is intended to do.

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Logic is the grammar of truth.

Meaning and absolute certainty are incompatible, and profound meaning and absolute certainty are profoundly incompatible.

The only thing intelligence is capable of is recognizing itself.