It's ridiculous to think that all our eyes are the same, and that some study can determine what is best for everyone.
And it's not that I've only used light modes and don't know any better. Our eyes and preferences change over time.
I grew up on what might be called "light modes": Teletype paper with black print on yellowish paper, and then punch cards and 11x13 fanfold paper with the white and green alternating stripes.
Later I spent many years using "glass teletypes" and the IBM Monochrome Display, both with green-on-nothing. I guess you would call that a dark mode.
When I started using Windows in the mid-1980s, I adapted to "light mode", but I had to turn the background down to a medium gray because even on a high end CRT display of the day, the flicker was so awful and it was less noticeable with a subdued background.
Then high-quality LCD displays came along and the flicker went away. Around the same time, my eyes were changing. I developed astigmatism, and even with good single vision prescription lenses (a must!) I found that text was much easier to read in a light mode. Perhaps for the same reason that I now have more trouble driving at night than I used to.
There is one bit of science to this: the light background causes your eyes' irises to stop down, and just as with a camera lens, this can result in a sharper image than a wide open aperture.
But again, my eyes are not your eyes, and I'm not disputing your preference for a dark mode.
I will say that one key to using a light mode successfully is to turn the brightness down. And maybe turn your room lighting up a bit. Someone else in the thread mentioned this, but a white background on your screen should be about the same brightness as a white sheet of paper in the same lighting conditions.
I don't think anyone is forcing anyone to do anything. If you want to smoke cigarettes, you have the license to do so. But that doesn't mean there aren't objective reasons no to do so.
Generally speaking, preferences aren't beyond scrutiny or axiomatic, or outside rational consideration. If a preference is meaningfully harmful (dark mode probably does not qualify), then in a rational person it tends to shift accordingly once the harmfulness is understood. Stubborn irrational preferences (like those that involve addiction) may require some effort or intervention to recondition them to conform with our objective good. At the very least, we ought to avoid indulging them.
And the healthy intelligent person invariably conforms to the consensus.
Is that how it is?
Au contraire, the problem is literally that we are forcing people. People are claiming medical issues (on both sides), too, so this is probably going to end up in some future debates about accessibility rules/laws.
You have the right to put a flashlight up to your eyes for 8 hours/day, you do not have the same right to do this to me.