The Trouble with Physics is number one on bestseller list

[Locrian]

Can anyone who has read or has a familiarity with the book sum up exactly what The problem with physics is supposed to be, as made in the book?

[Deified]

Can anyone who has read or has a familiarity with the book sum up exactly what The problem with physics is supposed to be, as made in the book?

 

String theory. Or rather the ethos that string theory is the only answer and that it is necessarily right. Smolin feels that the tactics employed by string theorists to keep other ideas out of the field (e.g. not inviting proponents of competing ideas to string conferences) are unethical and hurting physics. He dislikes the fact that so much of the available funding is going exclusively to string theorists, when string theory has failed to produce testable predictions for so long.

 

I'm just paraphrasing, I may have gotten details wrong. I haven't read the book, but I've read a couple reviews.

 

There is a review of this book, and Peter Woit's Not Even Wrong in this month's SciAm.

 

On the topic of Motl, Peter Woit claims that Motl offered readers of his blog $20 for any successful one-star reviews of Woit's book on amazon. That seems pretty unethical and downright nasty to me.

[Martin]

Hi Locrian and others following this thread,

 

It's quite understandable to be irritated with the book title saying

"THE trouble with physics".

 

it sacrifices precision and appropriateness in order to avoid wordiness and to be catchy enough to sell books.

 

titles are often a compromise---either between author and publisher or between different concerns the author has in mind.

 

Physics is several different things and it faces several different problems. Most likely there is not one trouble one can call THE trouble.

 

It is not just a body of exciting research---it is a community, a network of academic and government institutions---it has to communicate with the public and compete for funding and decide on allocation and priorities---it is a tradition, it is a culture with a certain empiricist style and certain standards. I havent ever thought about what it is. It's complex.

 

Of course it is a body of knowledge that you are taught the rudiments of in Freshman Physics----but it also has these social/institutional/cultural aspects.

 

I am very lazy about buying books. The ONLY review I take seriously is the one by Bee Hossenfelder, which is accompanied by an interview she had with the author.

 

I've communicated about a lot of things with Bee, over a year or so, and I think she is blunt, honest and realistic----she is also young and likes to make her blogs entertaining, so its not all just dry objectivity.

 

If Bee says the book's main aim is NOT to criticize string, and that it says a lot of appreciative things about stringy theorizing, but is using the string monopoly (in US fundamental physics theory research, not the whole field of physics!) as an EXAMPLE of a sociological trouble (perhaps characterized by fads, groupthink, funding politics, perhaps excessive micromanagement of young researchers by established ones, I don't know actually what the focus is)-------anyway using it as an EXAMPLE of a self-defeating tendency that can appear in science, conceivably in other sectors of physics as well as particle theory----if she says that Smolin is making a general point about how to make physics better (with string serving to illustrate).....

 

then I'm inclined to give that some credit provisionally until I see the book myself and can check.

 

I guess one way to probe would be to go to Bee's blog and actually ask her questions about her review, and followup questions to the interview.

 

I was hoping someone here might have read the book and could give us a fresh opinion:-)

[lucaspa]

Discounting his opinion... hard to say... but if being obnoxious, unprofessional, unproductive and childish isn't reason to ignore someone, what is?

 

Being contradicted by the data. That's the ONLY reason to discount an opinion within science.

 

We learned this with Galileo. It was his obnoxious, unprofessional, unproductive, insulting, and childish attitude that got him in trouble and caused his fellow scientists to bring charges against him.

 

Now, all the qualities you named can lead you to suspect that the data contradicts him. After all, if the data were on his side, he needn't resort to those tactics. However, you still have to show, by the data, that the ideas are wrong.

[lucaspa]

Hi Severian' date=' lucaspa!

 

the only review I've seen of Smolin's TwP book that I would even call a review (surveying the whole book, identifying the main themes, trying to judge what it really says) was by a German woman who is a Quantum Gravity phenomenologist----Sabine Hossenfelder

 

She goes by the name of Bee. here is Bee's review, if you are curious:

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2006/08/lee-smolins-trouble-with-physics.html[/quote']

 

Thank you. This discussion within physics reminds me of the debate over heliocentrism. When Copernicus proposed that the sun was the center of the solar system and all the planets orbited the sun, there wasn't any data for it. Because people were still using circular orbits for the planets in heliocentrism, the data didn't fit heliocentrism.

 

In fact, the appeal was emotional -- the universe was SO much bigger than people thought.

 

There followed a 50+ year period where people argued whether heliocentrism was correct., but no one had the data or the theory to convince the others.

 

This looks similar. String Theory has an emotional appeal: source for the physical "constants", unification of Relativity and QM, and an expansion of the universe to new entities (strings and 'branes).

 

It's obvious that some funding is going to alternative ideas. After all, Smolin has a job. So does Milgrom (modified Newtonian mechanics). It sounds like Smolin wants more of the pie.

 

My objection is that Smolin took the debate to the lay public instead of fighting it out among physicists. There was no point. Politicians are not going to read the book (to change the funding priority); scientists know the controversies from within science. Therefore the book becomes another attack on science. Science doesn't need that.

[CPL.Luke]

^ but the majority of this book's audience work in, study in, or are deeply interested in (the guys who fund things) physics. The average layperson hasn't even heard of string theory, and the ones who have read books like the elegant univers in order to better familiarize themselveswith it. This book's target audience is to people working in or studying physics, and is so aimed to raise awareness in the physics community that string theory is not all its cracked up to be, and that alternatives exist.

[Martin]

well for some its good news and for some apparently its seen as bad news and for others I guess it is just neutral NEWS news:-)

 

I can't discuss the impact of the book because i havent read it yet! And even if I had I would still have to listen to reviewers and other people that keep track of opinion-formation.

 

So as of now I'm predicting it's gonna have a positive effect on public's interest in fundamental physics and a positive effect on the scientific community---and will be especially good for physics (if it has any measurable effect at all.)

 

but this is a GUESS and other people are welcome to disagree and shake heads and say book will have a negative effect.

 

we won't KNOW for a while.

 

So right now, I'm basically just following the story and it is no big deal

 

JUST THAT SMOLIN TwP HAS BEEN THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER FOR ABOUT A WEEK STEADY NOW on the amazon general physics top 100 listing.

 

This started Wednesday 30 August and today is Tuesday 5 September and just now at 8:10 PM pacific time I checked and it was like this (interspersed with textbooks, mostly)

 

#1 The Trouble with Physics

 

#4 Not Even Wrong: the failure of string theory and the search for unity in physical law (Peter Woit)

 

#5 Elegant Universe (Brian Greene)

 

#7 The Road to Reality (Sir Roger Penrose)

 

#19 A Brief History of Time (Stephen Hawking)

 

#35 Warped Passages (Lisa Randall)

 

#40 Cosmic Landscape (Leonard Susskind)

 

#43 Parallel Worlds (Michio Kaku)

=========

check it out if yr curious

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/14560/ref=pd_ts_b_nav/102-4540543-7840144

 

the list changes regularly, but Smolin has been staying steady #1,

I just went back at 8:50 PM to make sure the link was right and the main difference was Woit's Not Even Wrong had moved up from #4 place to #3.

[lucaspa]

^ but the majority of this book's audience work in, study in, or are deeply interested in (the guys who fund things) physics. The average layperson hasn't even heard of string theory, and the ones who have read books like the elegant univers in order to better familiarize themselveswith it. This book's target audience is to people working in or studying physics, and is so aimed to raise awareness in the physics community that string theory is not all its cracked up to be, and that alternatives exist.

 

Let's test this. If the book were targeted to the physics community, it would have a lot of mathematics in it. But it doesn't; instead the reviews all comment on the personal touch and how Smolin weaves his personal life into it. Such a style is designed to reach a non-physics audience. If the real discussion is the state of physics and string theory, then physicists don't need Smolin's life story and anecdotes, do they?

 

Besides, the physics community isn't large enough to put the book in the Bestsellers list!

 

No, if Smolin wanted to reach the physics community, there are better forums. Review articles in Phys. Letters or Phys. Review, for starters. Or an article on the physics online journal http://www.arXiv.org.

[lucaspa]

So as of now I'm predicting it's gonna have a positive effect on public's interest in fundamental physics and a positive effect on the scientific community---and will be especially good for physics (if it has any measurable effect at all.)

 

but this is a GUESS and other people are welcome to disagree and shake heads and say book will have a negative effect.

 

I'm one of those that disagree. I'm afraid the effect will be negative. People don't understand that controversy like Smolin is stirring up is common in science. They will just look at this as another reason to think science is unreliable and scientists don't know what they are talking about. I wish Smolin and Woit had confined their efforts to forums restricted to the physics community instead of going to the general public

 

I'd like to be wrong.

[CPL.Luke]

Let's test this. If the book were targeted to the physics community' date=' it would have a lot of mathematics in it. But it doesn't; instead the reviews all comment on the personal touch and how Smolin weaves his personal life into it. Such a style is designed to reach a non-physics audience. If the real discussion is the state of physics and string theory, then physicists don't need Smolin's life story and anecdotes, do they?

 

Besides, the physics community isn't large enough to put the book in the Bestsellers list! [/quote']

 

^its a list of physics best sellers, you'll note that most of the books on the list are physics textbooks

 

Why would he put lots of math into it? if he did he would lose every student who is trying to study physics and get a feel for the theoretical physics community. He would lose every department head who is unfamiliar with the mathmatics of string theory and decides where the funding goes. He would lose every interested physicist who decided to pick up the book but didn't know anything about the mathmatics of loop quantum gravity or string theory.

 

and besides he could write a book with plenty of mathmatics in it but that would detract from his point, he is critisizing the way that theoretical physicsis being carried out currently, and he is critisizing the continued funding of a theory that's been going for 23 years without making a single prediction.

[Locrian]

Being contradicted by the data. That's the ONLY reason to discount an opinion within science.

 

Right, because book reviews can be judged based on wether they contradict the data or not.

[Locrian]

Hi Locrian and others following this thread' date='

 

It's quite understandable to be irritated with the book title saying

"THE trouble with physics".

 

it sacrifices precision and appropriateness in order to avoid wordiness and to be catchy enough to sell books.

 

titles are often a compromise---either between author and publisher or between different concerns the author has in mind.[/quote']

 

It is certainly true that the author of a book should be given a bit of room for dramatic flair with their title. Maybe I am being too sensitive about this one, but I have to admit to being tired of all of physics being represented by one or two areas.

 

I have been trying to think of what kind of thing could be considered a real, serious problem for the future of the discipline of physics. The only thing I can think of is if it turned out that there was a growing list of experimental data which could not be given a good predictive mathematical and physical theory.

 

For instance, what if, fifty years from now, our understanding of high temperature superconductivity was not improved? Laughlin seems to think there is a chance we will never have a reasonable predictive theory for it. What if there were also two dozen other physical processes we understood just as little? What if we could demonstrate that because of some property of the system, a predictive theory could not be produced for those? That, to me, would be a philosophical problem for the discipline.

 

I wonder if you think such a thing could even happen, Martin?

[bascule]

Hi bascule, I think you are talking about Lee Smolin here

 

Oops, I missed the context is Motl. Well I don't know who he is, but when I read stuff like this:

 

The interactions between Lee Smolin and mainstream physicists are interesting. Lee often visits us. We smile at each other and Lee is being politely explained why his newest theories can't really work.

 

It screams "arrogant prick" to me.

[Martin]

Locrian, about high temperature superconductors I think your guess is probably better than mine. I would be interested to know what you think in answer to your own question. But you asked first, so I'll play.

 

I wonder if you think such a thing could even happen, Martin?

It is an invitation to frankly speculate.

 

If Laughlin were proved right, I think it would be not because warmish superconductors are inherently too complex, but because we are NOT A GOOD ENOUGH ANIMAL. I reject that repugnant idea in every fiber. I think Laughlin is old, and old guys, if they havent already done something, get to thinking it is beyond human capacity.

 

Over and over people (though merely evolved fish) have somehow created new mathematics. Over an over these bilateral vertebrates have discovered the brilliant patterns of mathematical order in nature.

 

I think there will always be the next Riemann and (maybe 60 years later but eventually) always a young guy who sees how Riemann geometry matches gravity.

 

It could just get better (until we accidentally destroy ourselves or manage to spread life extrasolar...or something)

 

Certainly that's only a sort of faith. there is no way to prove it.

================

 

and as for warmish superconductors, if it is so darned complicated there is still computer modeling----maybe Laughlin didn't try hard enough yet:-)

[lucaspa]

Why would he put lots of math into it? if he did he would lose every student who is trying to study physics and get a feel for the theoretical physics community.

 

Because he is supposedly addressing the deficiencies of String Theory. Since ST is mathematics, then criticism should show some of the flaws in the math!

 

Otherwise, what you have is the equivalent of creationist literature that purport to show the flaws of evolution but never show the particular data or math involved there, either.

 

You are saying that physics students don't know math and can't follow math? If that is the case, then the physics community has much larger problems than Smolin is talking about.

 

He would lose every department head who is unfamiliar with the mathmatics of string theory and decides where the funding goes.

 

1. Department heads don't decide funding. That is done at the level of NSF. And NSF uses peer-review where the reviewers do know the math.

 

2. You are saying that departmental chairmen in Physics don't know math? Again, if that is true then physics has a lot bigger, but different, problem than Smolin addresses! Incompetence among the students and Chairmen!

 

He would lose every interested physicist who decided to pick up the book but didn't know anything about the mathmatics of loop quantum gravity or string theory.

 

Why? How many physicists would be unable to follow the math? If there are many, then the physics community has much bigger problems than Smolin's argument with String Theory!

 

he is critisizing the way that theoretical physicsis being carried out currently, and he is critisizing the continued funding of a theory that's been going for 23 years without making a single prediction.

 

1. But he is criticizing String Theory itself.

2. It is untrue that String Theory has not made a single prediction. Why have there been several modifications to String Theory? Because String Theory MUST predict the universe we see already. And several versionso of ST have failed that prediction -- thus the modifications.

 

This ignorance of how science is conducted, and how ST has been conducted, bothers me. If this is what Smolin, and you, are criticizing String Theory about, then all that has happened is that you have not only made a strawman, but a completely erroneous strawman.

 

Again, I have seen articles in the physics literature that complain that predictions made by ST have not been found. If there were no predictiions, then how can they say the experiments haven't found them?

[lucaspa]

Right, because book reviews can be judged based on wether they contradict the data[/i'] or not.

 

Yes, they can. The "data" here being

1. What the book actually states -- and you can document this by direct quotes within the review or comparison to other statements by the book author that you have already read.

2. Whether the review correctly states the position of the field. And here the data is the primary literature of the field.

 

But deciding the statements are wrong because the reviewer is abusive, insulting, obnoxious, etc, is not valid. Those are personality traits of the reviewer. They can be used to decide some things: whether you want to have dinner with him or have him date your sister. But, those traits don't tell you that the statements in the review about science (or the book) are not accurate.

[Martin]

Hi Locrian, lucaspa,

 

There have been several reviews of Smolin's book in actual published media (like Scientific American).

 

One does not have to rely on the person in question (say called X) self-publication in Amazon, which has some of the same drawbacks that caused Wikipedia to remove his 2004 list of reasons LQG would never work from their LQG article.

 

But of course one CAN take him as insightful and objective if one so chooses.

 

My point is that there are alternatives. There are actually published reviews by people with credentials and professional reputation that one can read. One doesnt have to read his review that has now been deleted and re-submitted some halfdozen or more times to the Amazon open forum.

===============

 

The trouble with discussing that person is that since he is strident and colorful, the discussion of his personality TAKES OVER FROM THE MAIN TOPIC EVERY TIME!

 

I've noticed this again and again. He has a talent for MAKING HIMSELF THE SUBJECT OF DISCUSSION at the expense of the real topic. And he can actually do this by kind of intrinsic long-distance magnetism or "smell" that hangs on his statements even if he isnt personally present. This is definitely entertaining and evidence of a type of charm couple with real talent. But it doesnt further the subject at hand.

 

My personal view:

I noticed him making what I perceived as technically inaccurate statements about non-string QG as early as 2003 on Usenet sci.physics.research. I was glad that his list of objections to LQG were eventually deleted from Wiki because I think they probably misled a number of people. I personally don't take seriously anything he says about non-string QG because I don't think he knows what he is talking about---or cares if it is accurate. The best word on him was probably what the mathematician John Baez said "It is hard to ignore him but I find it always repays the effort."

 

But my personal view is just that---my personal view! You can choose to consider him an authority!

 

Let us just not get into the habit of making that personage our topic of discussion

 

I will go get the latest sales figures.

 

Happy to say that Smolin's book has been number one on the list for OVER A WEEK NOW.

.

[Martin]

I will give some other wide audience physics books ranking for context.

this is the amazon GENERAL PHYSICS bestseller list

the bulk of which is college physics textbooks

 

Trouble with Physics has been #1 every day for over a week, since Wednesay 30 August

 

this is as of 9:10 AM pacific on Friday 8 September

 

#1 TwP

#5 NEW

#8 Elegant Universe (Brian Greene)

#14 Road to Reality (Roger Penrose)

#15 Brief History of Time (Stephen Hawking)

#53 Parallel Worlds (Michio Kaku)

#81 Warped Passages (Lisa Randall)

#87 Cosmic Landscape (Leonard Susskind)

 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/14560/ref=pd_ts_b_nav/102-4540543-7840144

 

I just checked to see if the link was good and as of 10:45 AM pacific it was somewhat similar

 

#1 TwP

#2 NEW

#6 Elegant Universe

#9 Brief History of Time

#16 Road to Reality

#57 Susskind's book

#63 Kaku's book

#91 Warped Passages by Lisa Randall

[CPL.Luke]

Locrian, The math in string theory is incredibly complex by most standards, and so unless you are involved in the theory or have studied it through a textbook or something similar the mathmatical arguments wouldn't make much sense.

 

Besides Smolin isn't critisizing the math he's criticizing the science of it. String theory has been pursued in a very old fashion, ie I think that the universe works like this, and I can write all these pretty equations that would tell me what the universe would look like if it did look like this. and while this mehod is all well and good for a pet theory or something similar it shouldn't suck up all of the research positions for an entire field.

 

I remember someone posted a feynmann quote about string theory on the amazon page not to long ago where he spoke very dissaprovingly about string theory.

[Locrian]

2. It is untrue that String Theory has not made a single prediction.

 

This is correct. String theory has made a few vague' date=' general, but useful predictions in the past. The point is they were [i']wrong[/i]. The discovery of a cosmological constant was a huge blow to the field.

 

String theory certainly doesn't make any predictions now in the form(s) that it is. Its continuing failure to reproduce the standard model decades after inception suggests that it suffers from a very serious problem indeed.

 

Locrian, The math in string theory is incredibly complex by most standards, and so unless you are involved in the theory or have studied it through a textbook or something similar the mathmatical arguments wouldn't make much sense.

 

True, but the physical ones certainly can, which means it is still an interesting subject. As for the Feynman quote, I've heard it too, but as much as I still agree with it, the truth is it was said decades ago and string theory is really an entirely different animal now.

[Locrian]

But deciding the statements are wrong because the reviewer is abusive, insulting, obnoxious, etc, is not valid.

 

I didn't say anything about deciding they were wrong. Please read my post more carefully.

[Locrian]

If Laughlin were proved right, I think it would be not because warmish superconductors are inherently too complex, but because we are NOT A GOOD ENOUGH ANIMAL. I reject that repugnant idea in every fiber. I think Laughlin is old, and old guys, if they havent already done something, get to thinking it is beyond human capacity.

 

Well it should definitely be said here that while Laughlin has contributed a great deal to physics, many of his current views are... unorthodox, at the least. Certainly many other experts in the field disagree with him on that.

 

The problem with HTS may be more than a problem of not having the appropriate mathematics available though. It may be that what we group under one name is actually a huge set of highly variable separate effects many of which are independant of microscopic factors of the system and shielded by quantum protectorates. In such a case we have to ask ourselves whether there is the possibility nature gave us a knot we can't untangle; we may be able to form some predictive ideas, but they won't be generalizable and won't give us any good picture of the underlying physical mechanisms.

 

You are certainly right to say this is pure speculation. It seems, based on history, a poor bet to make that we will uncover a problem we can't solve. And yet, we may have already done so in the past and are just used to the idea. Turbulent fluids comes to mind.

 

This, to me, would be The problem with physics - the identification of a broad problem rooted in experiment we can't solve. In other words, a physical system we can't appropriately describe. To me, quantum gravity doesn't actually meet this criteria as of yet. I think there is another book in all this.

[lucaspa]

But of course one CAN take him as insightful and objective if one so chooses.

 

My point is that there are alternatives. There are actually published reviews by people with credentials and professional reputation that one can read. One doesnt have to read his review that has now been deleted and re-submitted some halfdozen or more times to the Amazon open forum.

 

Martin' date=' let's clarify. The questions are:

 

a. Is Motl's review an accurate representation of the book and the state of physics?

 

b. Is Motl's personality sufficient reason to dismiss the review?

 

I never said that X was insightful or objective. I agreed that he used ad hominem arguments, synedoche, and other forms of weak argumentation. My point was that his obvious personal failings were not sufficient, in and of themselves, to dismiss the review. In the process of doing that, I tried to show several deficiencies of fact and evidence in the review that led me to question its accuracy.

 

You said in your post: "I noticed him making what I perceived as technically inaccurate statements about non-string QG as early as 2003 on Usenet sci.physics.research. I was glad that his list of objections to LQG were eventually deleted from Wiki because I think they probably misled a number of people. I personally don't take seriously anything he says about non-string QG because I don't think he knows what he is talking about---or cares if it is accurate. "

 

Notice your "I perceived as technically inaccurate statements"! Guess what? That's testing the accuracy of the review! You've also tested his objections to LQG and found them to be inaccurate. Therefore if we have the hypothesis: X always writes accurate statements concerning physics, then you have refuted that hypothesis.

 

Now comes the question: are any of X's statements about physics accurate and, if so, which ones? This gives you a position of skepticism. It is the same position I reached by reading the one review. In my case, it was because Motl did not adequately document -- by direct quotation -- that Smolin held the positions Motl attributed to him.

 

 

2. And yes, there are other reviews that one can read.

 

The trouble with discussing that person is that since he is strident and colorful, the discussion of his personality TAKES OVER FROM THE MAIN TOPIC EVERY TIME!

 

But it should not! We should be above and beyond that. So the question is: why would anyone focus on the personality when the issue is the accuracy of the review?

 

Happy to say that Smolin's book has been number one on the list for OVER A WEEK NOW.

.

 

OK, why are you happy about that? Does Smolin present an accurate picture of physics?

[lucaspa]

Besides Smolin isn't critisizing the math he's criticizing the science of it. String theory has been pursued in a very old fashion, ie I think that the universe works like this, and I can write all these pretty equations that would tell me what the universe would look like if it did look like this. and while this mehod is all well and good for a pet theory or something similar it shouldn't suck up all of the research positions for an entire field.

 

String theory has not been pursued in any "odder" fashion than other theories in physics. Dirac used to write pretty equations and even went so far as to say that the accuracy of the theory should be judged by the beauty of the equations.

 

Einstein's Relativity started out as a lot of pretty equations that told him what the universe would look like. Hawking's No Boundary fits exactly your description of String Theory.

 

Your objection seems to be the sociology of the situation, not the science. That is, your opinion is that too much effort has gone into String Theory and not enough resources have been allocated to alternative theories. That may indeed be a valid criticism. Allocation of resources within science is not organized. However, I notice that Smolin himself has always had a job! So the resource allocation can't be THAT bad.

 

I remember someone posted a feynmann quote about string theory on the amazon page not to long ago where he spoke very dissaprovingly about string theory.

 

And String Theory may indeed be incorrect. But the point here is that Smolin is not going to decide THAT issue in a book directed to the lay public. The issue of the accuracy of String Theory is going to be decided by those best able to evaluate the math and the data: the physics community. And it is going to be decided on the data.

 

As far as I can see, all Smolin is doing is confusing everyone and not letting science get on with doing science.

[lucaspa]

This is correct. String theory has made a few vague, general, but useful predictions in the past. The point is they were wrong[/i']. The discovery of a cosmological constant was a huge blow to the field.

 

Uh, the point was that the predictions were wrong was MY point. "Again, I have seen articles in the physics literature that complain that predictions made by ST have not been found. "

 

String theory certainly doesn't make any predictions now in the form(s) that it is.

 

You just said that the predictions were wrong. They didn't go away. So ST is still making predictions now. Your complaint seems to be that advocates of ST are simply ignoring that the predictions are wrong.

 

Just relax. If that is the case, then the accumulation of those anomalies and falsified predictions will refute the theory.

 

As for the Feynman quote, I've heard it too, but as much as I still agree with it, the truth is it was said decades ago and string theory is really an entirely different animal now.

 

Not basically different, is it? We still have vibrating strings/'branes, right? So the theory has been modified. Can't complain about that, can we? That's what is supposed to happen to scientific theories in the face of data.

 

An issue might be: have string theorists deliberately modified the theory so that it is now unfalsifiable by any conceivable data? That is, have they added ad hoc hypotheses such that they have covered all the falsifications?

 

IF that is the case, then they have violated some of the rules of being good scientists.