No one is arguing whether science is over, they are arguing whether modern theoretical physics is science.<p>Another thing somewhat impacted by this issue that people don&#x27;t think about is that we might not be able to keep up this pace in research for things like string theory for non-scientific reasons: specifically, science funding has flat-lined while the number of students entering the fundamental research fields is increasing. Really, particle physics is probably one of the most saturated fields in theoretical physics today.<p>There simply isn&#x27;t enough room for everyone to study what they want. Therefore, given the &quot;zero-sum game&quot; situation we have, we need to decide where it&#x27;s beneficial to spend our tax dollars and time researching...or most likely, governments who barely understand how to balance a budget will decide it for us. Given that string theory&#x27;s only argument at this point is suspect amongst a plurality of traditional scientists, it seems like low-hanging fruit to be picked off the funding tree.<p>Regarding the &quot;keep researching&quot; line in higher level theory that the end of the article and you seem to be promoting...I think yes, you will always have people researching something out there, although honestly, the people who will be able to will most likely be at a certain number of institutions which can be enumerated on one or two hands. The rest of theoretical particle physics? I guess the sustainability of that program is dependent on the stress tolerance of physics graduate students and post-docs for the time going forward.<p>The other way out is to, you guessed it, work in research that is testable, and leads to fancy toys the beltway boys can appreciate.