[lnanek2]

For most professionals in this field, what's true is pretty irrelevant. Only what brings in funding is what matters. That's why unprovable theories have so much success. It's much better to have something no one can prove wrong and destroy your career than have something that can be. Newton was proved wrong by Einstein, after all, being shown to just be an approximation compared to relativity. So the next step forward is to make sure your theory can't suffer like that and dry up your funding. The next step forward for these people isn't more accurate models and truth, it is more fundable ones.

[ISL]

I am a professional in the field :). I make precision experimental tests of gravity.

If a line of physical theory never leads to something testable, is it a physical theory?

Elegance and beauty are major guiding lights for theory, but they can't be the end goal if our desire is to learn the nature of Nature.

Arkani-Hamed and others chasing the physical utility of the Grassmanian are a modern example of beautiful mathematics straining toward physically-testable theory. I expect you'll see more money flowing that way in the next few years.