Theories about these compact, dense bodies often have properties like 'event horizons'.

Are models with even horizons testable?

Are models where bodies are slightly larger than the event horizon models, and an event horizon doesn't form, testable?

The term 'event horizon' comes, I think, from the idea that events that happen in the area of space defined by the event horizon, can't be known. That being the case, that would seem to me to make those models un-testable.

But other theories which don't have event horizons seem like they could be testable.

I personally don't think event horizons can form, and that they are just mathematical models that don't have any representation in the physical universe.

I am quite happy with the idea of a body in permanent, exponentially gravitationally time-dilated, collapse....they are a bit larger than the event horizon and in a slow(from a distant observer's point of view) state of collapse(asymptotic collapse with the Schwarzschild radius representing the limit of the collapse).

I read that in a lot of ways these two models are indistinguishable in the way they warp space-time etc...the non-event-horizon object curving space-time just slightly less, I guess..

If one model is testable and the other isn't which model is more valid scientifically?