[Animats]

This is mostly a problem with string theory. Here's a popular version of a critique.[1] Smolin's 2006 "The trouble with physics" is a book-length critique of it. Peter Woit' s "Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory & the Continuing Challenge to Unify the Laws of Physics" is even more critical.

It's been a decade since that, and the experimental evidence for string theory remains nonexistent. As Fred Hoyle once wrote, "Science is prediction, not explanation". A theory with no experimental support cannot lead to usable technology, either.

Fundamental physics is currently stuck. There's a lot of denial about this. There's a whole generation of string theory faculty in senior positions. That's the problem.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/science/2006/oct/08/research.high...

[TheOtherHobbes]

I know someone with a PhD in string theory. He eventually left the field - not just because it was (as he put it) "mostly bullshit", but because the popularity of the field was based on distortingly aggressive academic PR and self-promotion by rather too many researchers in the string theory community.

The other problem for physics is that so much of the talent works on Wall St doing things that are - for all practical purposes - useless, if not counterproductive.

So physics is stuck for two reasons, and won't start moving again until the culture changes enough to fix both problems.

Given the declining (political) value of long-term theoretical research in academia, and the relative impossibility of doing an original PhD exploring ideas outside the mainstream, I'm not expecting change any time soon.

This is beyond tragedy, because in terms of medium-term human survival, nothing is more important than new science.