philosophy

I also don't agree with most stuff I hear about qualia, but I don't think refuting them is easy, because you need an alternative concept for what we seem to feel and experience subjectively. People who write and edit articles like this one aren't dumb and have probably already anticipated every argument we could make against qualia.

Also, empirical science can only answer a limited set of questions. Many legitimate philosophical questions are meta-physical. For example the questions what distinguishes science from pseudo-science, what knowledge is, what is possible for us to know and what the scientific method should be. There is currently no consensus on any of these among philosophers/scientists. It might even be logically impossible to prove an answer to any of them.

Personally, I tend to agree with you. Or at least, I tend towards the view, that empirical science should in principle be able to one day lend strong support to a metaphysical explanation of qualia as emergent, that only invokes a minimum of new assumptions. I just don't think it'll be that easy.