Unfortunately I agree with you, that they are not going to let go easily. The premise of falsification doesn't apply to cosmology.
I wrote a similar take-down, https://medium.com/predict/the-webb-is-cast-72f2b8ab067d, aimed at what the Jame Webb will find and the point I most focused on, was using the premise of "spacetime" to explain how space expands.
That if relativistic space were to expand, the speed of light would have to increase proportionally, in order to remain Constant!
Two metrics are being derived from the same intergalactic light. One based on the speed and the other based on the spectrum. The speed is still being used as the denominator, or it would be a "tired light" model.
I really think the biggest issue in physics is time.
We are mobile organisms, so this sequence of perceptions, by which we experience our world, is logically a consequence of having to navigate it.
The effect that we experience time as the point of the present, moving past to future.
The reality is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.
There is no dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.
Energy is "conserved," because it is manifesting the present and creating time, as well as temperature, pressure, color and sound. Time is frequency, events are amplitude.
Consequently the energy goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past. Energy drives the wave, while the fluctuations rise and fall. No tiny strings necessary.
Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past, suggesting consciousness functions as an energy. Though it's the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy, feeding the flame, while the central nervous system sorts the information, signals from the noise.
Which is why we tend to focus on the patterns, rather than the dynamic, but also why they really are just shadows on the wall.
Tying it back to cosmology, galaxies are energy radiating out, toward infinity, as structure coalesces in, toward equilibrium. Both entropic. Between black holes and black body radiation. Energy lost from one area is replaced by energy from surrounding areas.
Though the black holes have quasars shooting out the poles. Giant lasers, synchronized light waves.
Synchronization is centripetal, while harmonization is centrifugal, so nodes and networks, organisms and ecosystems, particles and fields.
