[141205]

I know absolutely nothing about string theory, or the culture of high-energy physics, but I don't buy the pecuniary argument you are making. You aren't considering the downwind effects of allowing academic rot. The Bourbaki—and their acolytes—also sponged up only a tiny amount of academic funding, but a fever in the pulpit can spread out into the pews; we've seen the "New Math" paradigm damage a generation of primary-and-secondary-school students. Even today, we have issues with engineers not understanding that a derivative is a slope and an integral is an area—due in no small part to a cartel of bad actors in mathematical research. Allowing bad behavior in high-value and influential positions has consequences beyond a waste of government expenditure; a president could turn a democracy into a banana republic, and we would have issues beyond his salary of a few hundred thousand dollars being wasted.

[jshaqaw]

How many primary school students can't add fractions because string theory may be a less promising approach to a ToE versus loop quantum gravity or geometric unity? I know nothing about this stuff. You know nothing about this stuff. Since we both do know about the Bourbaki school of mathematics despite having different opinions on the value of building mathematics upward from foundational principles I'd say we are in the top .5% of the planet re general mathematical/scientific literacy. So I don't buy that even if string theory is wrong there is some massive spillover effect.