Indeed THHuxleynew , however he is talking about mainstream theory failures there.
Yes, well dark matter and energy are explicitly things not understood - and ever-better CBR measurements (amongst other early universe observations) will likely in the end allow us to pick one of the many candidates.
My favourite: quantum spacetime effects lead to MOND (which fits a lot better read the review article linked to this news article)
But the evidence for one or other definite theory just is not there yet. For example dark matter from entanglement.
So we have a lot of speculation, and no clear winner yet - but the good news is that these theories are all predictive (mainly of details in CBR and background gravitational waves). Observations of this stuff is getting better, as are infra-red observations of the early universe (James Webb etc). So unlike the "theoreticians talk to themselves" stuff these theories get regularly disproved by new experimental evidence. In the end (it is fair to expect) one will be so good in its overall predictivity and economy that we can be pretty sure it is right.
So exciting times. The clear holes in the standard model (and also its arbitrariness) all have potential to be resolved by a proper quantum spacetime theory - with high energy particle physics and cosmology properly unified. I am optimistic because of the enormous increase in the breadth and quality of experimental data.
Whereas for LENR - I am not yet seeing theories lead to predictions which are tested by experiments that can falsify the theories.
LENR-lite (the stuff that I - conditionally - like) in principle can lead to such theories. For example:
The suggested narrow peak resonance here can in principle be seen or eliminated from experiments. If it explains LENR, then temperature-dependence etc can be related to resonance position.
So inasfar as this work leads to inflexible and therefore disprovable theories (see the MOND review article for a nice definition of flexibility) - and the experiments that would disprove the theories are done - it would turn LENR into real science where theoreticians and experimentalists battle it out.
Without that we have a position similar to alchemy. The experimental work is real and significant, there is underlying science to be discovered, but the key beliefs of the experimentalists are driven by wish-fulfilment and have little or no relationship to that science.