This is a complaint rooted in sociology. People thought back in the 80s & 90s that string theory might be so constrained that can only describe one universe (p

This is a complaint rooted in sociology. People thought back in the 80s & 90s that string theory might be so constrained that can only describe one universe (presumably ours). They were wrong. String theory's more constrained than quantum field theory, but it's still capable of describing a lot of different universes. Most of the people who study it at the moment study it because it's been a fruitful source of ideas about quantum field theory. These people don't give press interviews very often, though.