  Astronomy can never be a hard core physics discipline, because the Universe
offers no control experiment, i.e. with no independent checks it is bound to be
highly ambiguous and degenerate. Thus e.g. while superluminal motion can be
explained by Special Relativity. data on the former can never on their own be
used to establish the latter. This is why traditionally astrophysicists have
been content with (and proud of) their ability to use known physical laws and
processes established in the laboratory to explain celestial phenomena.
Cosmology is not even astrophysics: all the principal assumptions in this field
are unverified (or unverifiable) in the laboratory, and researchers are quite
comfortable with inventing unknowns to explain the unknown. How then could,
after fifty years of failed attempt in finding dark matter, the fields of dark
matter {\it and now} dark energy have become such lofty priorities in astronomy
funding, to the detriment of all other branches of astronomy? I demonstrate in
this article that while some of is based upon truth, at least just as much of
$\Lambda$CDM cosmology has been propped by a paralyzing amount of propaganda
which suppress counter evidence and subdue competing models. The recent WMAP3
paper of Spergel et al (2007) will be used as case in point on selective
citation. I also show that when all evidence are taken into account, two of the
competing models that abolish dark energy and/or dark matter do not trail
behind $\Lambda$CDM by much. Given all of the above, I believe astronomy is no
longer heading towards a healthy future, unless funding agencies re-think their
master plans by backing away from such high a emphasis on groping in the dark.
