Truth about modern science
String theory: playing at science
String theory is sterile toying with formalism. Nothing follows from it.
Despite the name, it is not a scientific theory. A scientific theory sticks its neck out: it says what will happen, and if that doesn’t happen, it dies. String theory never sticks its neck out. Its equations allow so many possible universes that ours is just one more, somewhere in the pile. Whatever we observe, the theory says: yes, I allow that.
A structure that can accommodate anything explains nothing. It tells you nothing about the world, only about itself.
Every trader knows this kind of model. Give a model enough free parameters and it will fit any past data perfectly – and predict nothing. In finance we call it overfitting, and we fire people for it. In physics, it gets tenure.
Forty years. No prediction tested. No experiment proposed that could kill it. And the defenders always say the same thing: wait. The energies are too high, the instruments too weak, the next generation will see. A prophecy whose date is always next decade.
Its defenders also point to the beautiful mathematics it produced. Fine – then call it mathematics, and fund it as mathematics.
Then there is the institution. Physics used to have a judge outside itself: the experiment. Nature said yes or no. String theory removed the judge. What is left is peers judging peers – string theorists hiring string theorists, reviewing string theorists, funding string theorists. A closed economy with no price signal. We know how those end: not in collapse, but in endless self-confirmation.
The money is not even the main cost — though over forty years it has probably run to billions, for no result. The main cost is the posts, the careers, the best minds of two generations – the ones who could have done physics – spent on a game whose rules guarantee it never loses.
We want, and we need, a science that brings understanding of the world – understanding that can ultimately serve the magnificence and expansion of life. Science that lets us build, heal, travel further, live more. That is what we fund it for. A game with no exit to reality serves only its players.
Real science can be wrong. That is its dignity. String theory cannot be wrong – which is exactly why it cannot be right. And an institution built around a theory that cannot fail becomes an institution that cannot fail either: no result embarrasses it, no decade ends it.
Not science. Playing at science – with tenure.
Stop the money flow. It will do everyone good – physics, the taxpayer, and the string theorists most of all.