jrc,
I certainly admit to my own limits, so I'm not sure of your references. What I would guess is that as this gravitational contraction seems to be the opposite of radiant expansion, we should consider gravity as not so much a property of mass, but mass as an effect and part of this range of contraction. That every interaction, measurement, bound crossing, anything which might be conducive to producing form, is part of this spectrum of contraction, even photons coalescing out of fields. So that the effect attributed to dark matter is not due to some missing mass, as it is the effect of contraction and attraction across the entire spectrum.
Anytime energy coalesces, it takes up less space and anytime the form breaks down and releases energy, it takes up more space. So it can be geometrically described in terms of the space expanding/contracting, especially if one has dismissed space as an artifact of measurement.
Yet because energy that hasn't coalesced into a measurable unit can't be measured, than it is presumed not to exist. Consider Eric Stanley Reiter's entry in the questioning the Foundations contest of 2012;
https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1344
Here is an essay I posted on medium a few weeks ago;
https://medium.com/@johnbrodixmerrymanjr/the-confessions-of-a-cosmic-heretic-5cd4c044b8ea?source=friends_link&sk=4a99967885aa68b3a7a14db68e96ed64