Science has a long history of proposals based on various fudge factors. Some of those fudge factors disappear when we get better measurements. Some require learning more about the system. For example Newton's theory of sound was consistently wrong until Laplace figured out how adiabatic heating changed things. Some require learning more about the physics. For example Einstein got rid of the need for a fudge factor for figuring out Mercury's orbit. Some require proposing new physics.

When dark matter is called a fudge factor, that is absolutely technically correct. It *IS* a fudge factor. It is a fudge factor that explains a whole lot of stuff, at the cost of requiring something new whose nature we have no real clue about. This isn't conspiracy theory. This is how science works. It is how science is supposed to work.

It's current status is much like that of the neutrino when it was first proposed. A particle we can't think of a way to detect in any way other than the fact that it is required for conservation laws to work out. As it happens, we did eventually figure out how to detect it. But only through discovering then-unknown physics (chain reactions), and building detectors which required a budget that was unthinkable for physics back when the neutrino was proposed in 1930.