On the other hand, Flat Earth offers us several models, incompatible with each other, and these models don't give us any answer or prediction, just more questions on how they are supposed to work. The existence of several models allows flat earthers to cherry pick an explanation for anything. Where is the pseudoscience?
That is how science should be done. FEers don't cherrypick answers from whatever model is convenient, every FEer has their own model that they hold to and can answer the questions for, some choose to be more representative when they answer newbies and people that seem ignorant of that, but they don't switch between models when convenient. I can tell you what model I subscribe to, just as Tom Bishop could tell you which he favors, and many others could do the same.
They do. Tom did post very recently that he favored a bipolar earth model, but still tried to argue something based on a monopole model. Cherrypicking, as blatant as possible. And a common answer to any question seems to be "it really depends on the model".
This is preferrable to the tradition-based system of RET where a model gains traction simply because it's been around longer, and you have to take on faith that people a century ago with the resources of a century ago didn't make a mistake, because your system is incapable of replacing something established. It only appends and tweaks small changes, or adds things, but never goes back, never questions. Fundamental claims like relativity, dark matter, those should have been the call to go back and re-examine earlier discoveries and claims in light of it, instead they were added to a model assumed to be accurate rather than re-verified, creating this ever-unstable pile of hypotheses that cracks keep opening up in.
Do you mean that, for example, the discovery of quantum physics and relativity did not lead to re-examination of what we knew? That the Copernician model did not supersede the geocentric Ptolemaic model? The Copernician model or relativity didn't gain traction because it'd been around longer: it gained traction because it works better than previous models.
Prediction does not matter. Explanatory power does. Demanding a model make new predictions, while it can be sufficient, only serves to further the tradition-over-logic approach of RET. If you have two theories, A is established, B is new and competing, and an experiment was performed a decade ago because it was predicted by theory A, if theory B also predicts the same, then all that sets the theory apart is which came first. If someone was to go back in time and suggest B before A, and perform the same experiment, suddenly A would be the one that needs to make a new prediction. The predictive model of scientific theory does nothing but favor what has already been suggested, and thus prefers the models that were designed when less was understood. It is one of the many fundamental errors with the RE approach.
Prediction matters a lot. If you hold a theory to be true, then you should be able to make predictions based on this theory, that you can test and that will fail if the theory is wrong. That's what falsifiability is about. If there is no way to make an observation that could prove your theory wrong, then it is not falsifiable and has little or no scientific value.
Also, if two theories predict the same thing, then they are not really competing.
RET does raise many questions, such as the one I raised in the OP. The difference between RET and FET is that we ask the questions. You are taking your own refusal to question as evidence there are no flaws, when if anything it means the opposite. A true scientific approach is one where there are questions, where nothing is ever taken as complete or fully settled, and those questions are actually asked rather than conveniently ignored.
FET asks questions that have been answered long ago.
Further, claiming eclipse predictions grew more accurate with understanding is simply false. This is one of many crucial misunderstandings the predictive approach takes. You think because you can more accurately describe something in terms of a model, that it means the model has more evidence behind it. Instead, eclipses are by definition a predictable phenomenon, repeating completely after each saros cycle, the equations that govern them were once filled with unknowns, and then filled with values from past recorded eclipses. To say our understanding made eclipses more predictable is to confuse cause and effect, it was the predictability of eclipses that led to the equations that supposedly describe them, simply because you can make a formula for anything predictable.
Saros cycles are not enough, by far, to accurately predict the specific time and location of an eclipse. You are rewriting history. Halley made his precise prediction of an eclipse in 1715 thanks to the equations of Newton's laws of gravity. These formulas did not come out of nowhere. Newton made a hypothesis. People tried his hypothesis and saw it worked. They used it to make predictions, and these predictions were accurate. Newton wasn't looking for a way to predict eclipses.
Then centuries later, Einstein made a hypothesis that was mostly compatible with Newton's, but filled the gaps where Newton's failed. Einstein showed Newtonian physics' limits. But within these limits, it still applies, and still is in use today.
If tomorrow someone comes with a new theory that updates Einstein's relativity, it will have to be compatible with all the many cases that relativity correctly predicts, just like relativity had to be compatible with all the cases that work with Newtonian mechanics.
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