a lot better...we can excite these atoms in a lab and simply measure what comes out. often times don't even need a model because spectroscopy can be fully empirical for many transitions
And so you have proved my point. The observations presented in this article can be made consistent with both...as such one should think about stronger tests of both LCDM and MOND.
Again, LCDM and galaxy formation are two different things. "...and we didn't see what we were expecting at all..." It depends on who you ask. There were many pre-JWST models that did well in this regard. A particularly interesting one is this from 2018 (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018MNRAS.474.2352C/abstra...). That group even had to write another paper reminding everyone of what they predicted (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2024arXiv240602672L/abstra...). Another example is here (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2023OJAp....6E..47M/abstra...) which shows results from a simulation from ~2014. I can provide numerous other examples of this. My point isn't which theory is or isn't wrong, my point is that what is presented in this particular article is not a constraint on any realistic theory of gravity as the sensitivity of these particular observations to galaxy formation modeling is so strong.
This is a misrepresentation of what I am saying. By no means am I casting an aspersion on JWST. I am casting an aspersion on this particular observation as a test of MOND and LCDM. Also I highly disagree about your comments on my line of reasoning. The fact that you can obtain a huge range of possible galaxy properties in the context of LCDM indicates that in general, tests of LCDM and MOND that rely on galaxy formation model are in usually not strong tests. This is the key issue with using the abundance of high-z galaxies (or even their masses -- despite the fact that these aren't measured) as a test. In the context of LCDM, you need haloes to form galaxies but it has been shown many times that there are enough haloes to solve the problem (see the paper linked) by a huge amount.
In my opinion, this article is misleading at best. "...scans of ancient galaxies gathered by the JWST seem to contradict the commonly accepted predictions of the most widely accepted Cold Dark Matter theory, Lambda-CDM." --> LCDM doesn't predict what galaxies should look like, it simply predicts how much mass is in collapsed structures and that dark matter haloes grow hierarchically. In contrast, with JWST we see light and need to infer what the underlying properties of the system are. It was shown very early on that the theoretical upper limit (i.e. taking all of the gas that is available in collapsed structures and turning it into stars) predicts a luminosity function (i.e. number of galaxies per unit luminosity) that is orders of above what JWST has observed (e.g. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2023MNRAS.521..497M/abstra...). This means that there is plenty of space within the context of LCDM to have bright and seemingly large and massive galaxies early on. Based on current JWST data at these early epochs, there are really no convincing arguments for or against LCDM because it's highly sensitive to the galaxy formation model that's adopted.