>Is there anything that would cause adherents to accept that it is a failed theory? The way it is supposed to work is adherents of a theory give it up if it ca

>Is there anything that would cause adherents to accept that it is a failed theory? The way it is supposed to work is adherents of a theory give it up if it can't make empirical predictions and another theory comes along that can. However at present we don't have a alternative theory that is doing that, so string theorists are free to hang onto their theory, in spite of the lack of empirical proof. Of course, many string theorists nowadays say that empirical proof is not necessary for proving a theory. That would seem to imply that if an alternative theory made a number of correct predictions that string theory can't, that would not be a reason for abandoning string theory.