  We discuss the possibility that the inflationary paradigm, undoubtfully
today's best framework to understand all the present cosmological data, may
still have some viable challengers. The underlying idea for such discussions is
that although inflation already passed quite a large number of tests, indeed
enough to make it part of the so-called ``standard model'' of cosmology, it has
always been through indirect measurements: there is not a chance that we may
ever directly check its validity, and therefore, in order to assert its
factuality with increasing level of confidence, it is required that we compare
its predictions not only to observations, but also to as many contenders as
possible. Among other categories of possible models, we wish to put the
emphasis in particular on bouncing cosmologies that, however not as complete as
the inflation paradigm might be, could still represent a reasonnable way of
explaining the current data. Hopefully, future data will be able to
discriminate between these various sets of theories.
