[exmadscientist]

Yes, this, exactly.

The moment someone has a theory that's experimentally testable somehow (somehow possible, anyway), there will be plenty of interest. There has never been such a theory to date.

Until that arrives, it's all just hot air.

[inigyou]

A new theory could also explain known observations using fewer assumptions. The standard model has a lot of odd things baked into it - why these specific quarks and leptons? Why no right-handed neutrinos? Most simply, why does each particle have the rest mass it does? And why is there a Higgs field that's very similar to the field of condensation of Cooper pairs in a normal superconductor, but with more dimensions?

Solving just one "why" question might earn you a Nobel prize.