This is pretty much a standard model in academic publishing
99 karma · joined January 24, 2019
So when the question is posed "What is a responsible scientist to do in this situation?" I think the answer is clearly, accept it as an "out-there" but currently not disprovable hypothesis, and if you feel strongly that it's incorrect, dedicate effort and time to showing with evidence (at least quantifiable empirical evidence) that this is the case, ideally in a published and peer-reviewed paper.