The UFT-ID Diagnostic Framework for Cosmological Inference: Model Transportability and the Hubble Tension

This work formalizes the UFT-ID Diagnostic Framework as a meta-scientific tool for evaluating the transportability of inference across regimes in contemporary cosmology. Rather than proposing a new cosmological model or modification of gravity, the framework advances a diagnostic claim: persistent anomalies such as the Hubble tension may arise from implicit assumptions of a single, transportable effective metric across cosmological epochs, despite radical changes in structure, entropy, and information distribution. Within this framework, dark matter and dark energy are treated as phenomenological stabilizers—parameters introduced for model closure—whose ontological interpretation may exceed what current observational data strictly warrants. The document provides a structured taxonomy of inference failure modes and introduces explicit methodological guardrails designed to prevent the reification of mathematical placeholders into claims about physical inventory. The UFT-ID framework is explicitly diagnostic rather than constructive. It is intended to function as a conceptual “check-engine light” for model transportability, remaining compatible with multiple future theoretical resolutions, including modified gravity, emergent or relational geometry, and revised inference methodologies.