Influence of Small-Scale Inhomogeneities on the Cosmological Consistency
  Tests
  The current cosmological dark sector (dark matter plus dark energy) is
challenging our comprehension about the physical processes taking place in the
Universe. Recently, some authors tried to falsify the basic underlying
assumptions of such dark matter-dark energy paradigm. In this Letter, we show
that oversimplifications of the measurement process may produce false positives
to any consistency test based on the globally homogeneous and isotropic LCDM
model and its expansion history based on distance measurements. In particular,
when local inhomogeneity effects due to clumped matter or voids are taken into
account, an apparent violation of the basic assumptions ("Copernican
Principle") seems to be present. Conversely, the amplitude of the deviations
also probes the degree of reliability underlying the phenomenological
Dyer-Roeder procedure by confronting its predictions with the accuracy of the
weak lensing approach. Finally, a new method is devised to reconstruct the
effects of the inhomogeneities in a LCDM model, and some suggestions of how to
distinguish between clumpiness (or void) effects from different cosmologies are
discussed.
