String Theory Debunked?

[thylacine]

[ QUOTE ]

String theory may not have made testable physical predictions, but it has generated testable mathematical predictions for areas of mathematics not obviously connected to string theory, such as enumerative algebraic geometry.

It's absurd to call string theory "bunk" at this point. I agree with many of the criticisms of string theory (I attended some talks supposedly aimed at 1st year graduate students which were unintelligible to me and to the other postdocs attending), but string theory is very far from nonsense.

[/ QUOTE ]

Could it be that what has actually been found is a deep connection between two or more interesting areas, none of which is string theory?

[Metric]

I wouldn't call it bunk, but I do think it's a shame that the "string theory culture" has managed to monopolize the entire fundamental theory program in the physics community over the last 20 years. If it turns out to be wrong or ambiguous (and it is taking on a distinct look of sickness about it right now), it will have been the greatest waste of theory resources of all time -- untold amounts of research funding, professorships, and an entire generation of theorists having committed their life's work to an idea that might just simply have been wrong-headed from the beginning.

[FortunaMaximus]

Would you expect otherwise, Metric, from a field that went on a 4-decade heater?

[Metric]

First, I certainly wouldn't consider string theory's progress "a heater." Self consistency is all fine and dandy, but real triumph demands some successful sticking-out-of-the-neck in making predictions.

I don't blame the string theory community for wanting to study string theory. I blame the major theory centers for devoting very nearly 100% of their theory resources (professorships, funding) into string theory for the last quarter of a century. Now the theory begins to look sick, and the entire field of theoretical physics flies into crisis -- not exactly a pretty picture.

[FortunaMaximus]

No, I wasn't referring to string theory in general. Physics as a general rule has really exploded since the dawn of the 20th. As such, it's going to be a field that expands and has too much dead wood. And you get politics into the mix, it's easy to see where marginal arguments can get far more credence than they should. Especially when it's difficult to rule them out using scientific rigor.

No, the system of academics is in need of serious pruning, but at least there are institutes and some departments that focus on the different aspects of theortical physics. So with all that excess, there's hope yet another patent clerk will emerge and take the field another rung up the ladder.

[surftheiop]

Synopsis: String theory has made no testable predictions."

Synopsis: EVOLUTION has made no testable predictions.

[MidGe]

[ QUOTE ]
Synopsis: EVOLUTION has made no testable predictions

[/ QUOTE ]

I guess you have a very low level of education [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[surftheiop]

Acually i do, 9th grade biology is it as far as evolution goes, and all we talked about was plants.