Shallow criticisms of string theory usually miss how difficult it is to come up with physical theories that don't lead to some kind of contradiction. For this r

Shallow criticisms of string theory usually miss how difficult it is to come up with physical theories that don't lead to some kind of contradiction. For this reason, lots of new physics has been discovered by looking at mathematical constraints first and experiments second. The math of string theory is pretty, but more importantly it works out, and this alone makes string theory worthy of some attention. If it's getting too much attention, that's probably more a sign that there are very few interesting research directions left in physics than that all the physicists are deluding themselves.