Webb and Hubble telescopes affirm Universe’s expansion rate, puzzle persists

We've known for a long time that different branches of science give different values for the rate of expansion of the universe. That's a clear sign that something is wrong with our theories. Another problem for me is the invention of things like dark matter and dark energy to plug gaps in the theory. Whatever happened to Occam's razor?

Experiments are done to verify theories, not the other way around (inventing theories to justify the results).
Theoretical physicists bullsh... succesfully so far because of the limit of our instruments until ... JWST.

"the problem-solving principle that recommends searching for explanations constructed with the smallest possible set of elements." - Nothing "happened" to Occam's razor, we just haven't found an explanation with fewer elements than dark matter & energy yet.

Cosmic distances are calculated by more than one means. The effort to measure the distance to celestial objects began in Ancient Greece employing the Parallax Method which began by using the Earth's orbit, 6 months apart, as the base of a triangle used to construct an isosceles triangle and calculating the included angles, resulting in the perpendicular distance calculation. The first of course was our Moon. This works well out to a few parsecs. For greater distances there are several methods most depending on some "Standard Candle".

One such "candle" is the Type 1a SuperNova. Type 1a supernovae that are relatively close to us appear to have the same brightness relative to distance so they are very useful at nearby bodies but just how standard they are throughout the galaxy is sort of an educated assumption since we don't know if Mass is or was the sole contributor always to brightness. We try to compare several accepted "candles" to arrive at some level of average accuracy. These methods will improve over time as new technology develops and already have improved accuracy many fold over 19th and 20th Century measurements. It currently is still a bit like constructing the Pyramids with bits of string and a wheel.

The reason I mention distance is that those data limitations plus the limitations on our complete understanding of Gravity lead to differences creating substantial conflicts in such things as rate of expansion and the rotation speed of galaxies which led to the theories of Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Dark Matter was first hypothesized by Lord Kelvin in the late 19th Century.

By ~1930 a number of astronomers began to publish data on observations that simply could not be so with the then current understanding. This all took a leap into theory beginning with Fritz Zwicky in 1933 and furthered by numerous astronomers data throughout the early 20th Century and reached quite a tipping point with a few astronomers mid Century, perhaps most notably Vera Rubin in the late 60s and 70s.

I've left out a great deal (obviously) but the point is that these theories are each named "Dark" for a reason. Something is causing the ever mounting number of observed phenomena much as before molecules of gas were understood, few knew what "wind" is, only that it obviously exists. Similar progress occurred with simple Fire. Occam's Razor is in full effect. It's just that we are in the very primitive stages of figuring out precisely what is responsible. For example, one competing theory was (and I suppose still is among a few) MOND, which essentially proposes that gravity is variable. It, however, fails to explain numerous qualities that Dark Matter and Dark Energy handle with some aplomb.

With so many major advances taking place once we started building high altitude balloons and especially rockets and incredible telescopes, it's easy to forget that many textbooks as late as mid to late 1950s still taught the entirety of the Universe consisted of but one galaxy, ours.