I’m just a guy who minored in physics, but my vague understanding was always that dark matter and dark energy have always been considered placeholders of sorts, kind of just names for “we don’t know what’s happening here”. But OTOH we can see what clearly appears to be matter deflecting light reaching us from afar, and that matter doesn’t seem to interact with the electroweak force…so maybe dark matter and dark energy have different theoretical statuses.
But I haven’t looked at physics in ten years so the above might not even make sense.
There are many people who claim to be professional academics in the field that believe they are real for personal and political reasons. Many such people will fight to death in a great holy crusade any notion or expression that the dark matter/energy aren’t completely real as the air you breathe.
To me, that alone suggests they aren’t real. I suspect the unstated motives are related to funding and/or need for validation by consensus.
People argue most fervently about things when you can't meaningfully measure the difference between the viewpoints. Because, of course, that argument can go on forever since no one can prove either way.