[chneu]

My understanding is that string theory has basically been tossed aside by most of the field.

It's one of those things that got public support as it fell out of favor in academia. Now it won't go away because the public likes it.

[raverbashing]

What I think happened is that this is probably one of the biggest "speculative steps" physics has taken without enough experimental evidence

Sure, it's fine to think about and theorize, but I think they got way ahead of themselves than what the experimental results allowed them.

[sshine]

The public likes Sheldon Cooper.