The "untestable" meme is just a thought terminating cliche. It's as if you believe no researchers ever considered the brilliant insight that the framework is difficult to test. History is littered with plenty of examples of a novel discovery, understanding, or technology yielding new opportunities for experimental design.
replyIt's also a glib dismissal of the unexpected mathematical elegance of string theory that makes it so compelling. Worse, it completely ignores the material contributions to applied physics that string theory has made possible which is obviously worth "spending your life's work on" - as if people need to justify the value of their life's work to disinterested onlookers lest they be demeaned.
This is a pretty silly belief to hold about science. Plenty of strong, well held standards of the modern era were considered ridiculous fringe beliefs a century ago.
replyThey were testable, no?
replyNot taking either side here - but surely a lot of cosmological phenomena couldn't be testable/verifiable at the time they were theorized either?
reply(thinking of black holes for example - they were theorized way before we had observations. And presumably a lot of particle physics can similarly be theorized before we built the technology to experimentally verify them)
Black holes were theorized and you could design experiments that, given the proper instruments, would allow them to be detected. Relativity was similar (famously, the curvature of spacetime was demonstrated during a solar eclipse by being able to see stars that should have been behind the sun).
replyString theory has nothing even theorized that would allow us to prove it.
Sometimes theories need engineering to catch up to become testable.
replyWell, we can test it, but you'll need to give me a ton of money in order for me to test it.
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