When is it reasonable to abandon a scientific research program? When would it be premature? We take up these questions in the context of a contemporary debate at the border between astrophysics and cosmology, the so-called “small-scale challenges” to the concordance model of cosmology (ΛCDM) and its cold dark matter paradigm. These challenges consist in discrepancies between the outputs of leading cosmological simulations and observational surveys, and have garnered titles such as the Missing Satellites, Too Big To Fail, and Cusp/Core problems. We argue that these challenges do not currently support a wholesale abandonment or even modification of cold darkmatter. Indeed, the nature of the challenges suggests prioritizing the incorporation of known physics into cosmological simulations
