Correct - a hypothetical particle should not be considered equivalent to something well-established by evidence (until there is more evidence)
Discussion
The neutrino particle was never hypothetical. It was made up to explain an observation. Half a century later that hasn't changed.
The Higgs Boson was hypotetical. When proposed, it did not explain any measurement at the time.
"The neutrino particle was never hypothetical. It was made up to explain an observation."
From wiki: "A hypothesis (pl.: hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it."
Something made up to explain observations is literally the definition of a hypothesis.
You're correct. When I said "hypothetical", I really meant "speculative" or "conjectural".
That definition of hypothetical is a bit broad, but ok, I'll take it. With that definition, every scientific model is hypothetical since it is proposed and requires continuous testing and validation. Nothing remains proven forever.
Back to the original example: dark energy is a "hypothetical" scientific model, not conjectural. We are not waiting or looking to observe it, we already did measure it. It's a simplist shallow model, but the best one so far.
Can you explain how something is "well established"?
The hypothesis is tested, ideally many times by many people
In each case, the test produces results consistent with the hypothesis
These tests form a body of evidence that serves to disprove competing hypotheses and (until some sort of contradictory evidence is found) makes the theory well-established
So you observe something, then you form a hypothesis to explain the observation, but that's not enough to be scientific. You have to actually test the hypothesis and try to explain what's happening. Merely positing a hypothesis is not good enough. A hypothesis which serves to "explain" without producing understanding is also not good enough.
In creationism / intelligent design debates there's a notion of "god of the gaps" where god is invoked to fill in a gap in knowledge, which doesn't really explain anything so much as give a label to our ignorance. The same thing happens in physics where some particle or phenomenon is posited to "explain" observations that are inconvenient / inconsistent with existing theory. Unless those hypothetical particles / phenomena can be tested and their mechanisms understood, they are just other ways of naming our ignorance.
I like your argument here but the "something that produces understanding" part is fairly subjective and fragile.
Ofc I know what you mean there and don't mean to gaslight but it's still not a solid definition.
The way Feynman put it was that your theory shouldn't just make the observation that produced it "come out right" but should make something else "come out right" as well
So either we accept that "social consensus" is an intrinsic part of the scientific method, or we broaden the definition of what constitutes a scientific model 😂