[Tadpole9181]

I think you are vastly overestimating the number of string physicists and how much their non-experimental research costs.

There's maybe a couple or few hundred-ish in the whole world that focus on it. And they don't need much money because it's pretty much all math.

[boznz]

As a percentage of theoretical physicists it is probably significant though. A Better question is how much love/money/attention is going into rival theories ?

[snapplebobapple]

It is basically this. People arguing for string theory have no concept of how to maximize return with uncertainty. The thing had 50 years of substantial funding and substantial mindshare and pushed us nowhere. Any rational person with basic risk understanding would know at this point its a fail and we are in the not knowing what to pursue phase so we should be supporting small investments in dicerse options &ntil something promising happens then we can concentrate funding there &ntil that times out or gices us the understanding to achieve something new and great. The lifecycle of increasingly aupporting string theory s=ould have turned 2 to 3 decades ago instead of just recently. We lost atleast 20 and more like 30 years of progress we didnt have because a bunch of very smart people captured the physics funding aparatus to enrich thselves.