The Copernican Principle has been killed by the sword of empirical evidence
The Old Paradigm: The Copernican principle assumed that our solar system is not in the center of the universe, and that, as observers, we didn't occupy a special place. First stated by Copernicus in the 16th century, today the idea is wholly accepted by scientists, and is an assumed concept in many astronomical theories.
The New Paradigm: Human beings occupy a special space in the Universe
Is the Observable Universe Consistent with the Cosmological Principle?
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.05765
excerpts:
EPILOGUE . . . in a period of normal science, scientists tend to agree about what phenomena are relevant and what constitutes an explanation of these phenomena, about what problems are worth solving and what is a solution of a problem. Near the end of a period of normal science a crisis occurs - experiments give results that don’t fit existing theories, or internal contradictions are discovered in these theories. There is alarm and confusion. Strange ideas fill the scientific literature. Eventually there is a revolution. Scientists become converted to a new way of looking at nature, resulting eventually in a new period of normal science. The “paradigm” has shifted. – Steven Weinberg on Kuhnian shifts
Is the Universe consistent with the Cosmological Principle?
As already outlined in section I, in order to have computable and predictive cosmological modeling, it is natural to start with the CP as the working assumption. Yet, since the CP is not a fundamental physical symmetry, but rather an assumption imposed when we interpret observations, there is nothing that prevents it being violated at a higher precision and/or when one does not assume the same behavior for a physical observable over the celestial sphere, i. e. not averaging over the sky. The results highlighted in this review suggest that we have already reached the level of precision where violations of the CP may show in results. Systematics may be at play across a host of observables, but as the number of observations grow, this possibility seems less likely.
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New Astronomical Discovery Challenges 500-Year-Old ‘Copernican Principle’
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2021/06/16/new-astronomical-discovery-challenges-500-year-old-copernican-principle/?sh=5d8690226d93