Public grant making is a very political process. People imagine there is an apolitical body that makes grants to physicists based on the merits of their work .

Public grant making is a very political process. People imagine there is an apolitical body that makes grants to physicists based on the merits of their work ... but that's not the case. In any resource allocation scheme where the grantors have no skin in the game, politics and cronyism will dominate in the long term. That's probably what's happened here. String theorists get grants not because string theory produces practical results, but because there is now a network of string theorists and sympathizers in charge of the institutions that control professorships and grant making. That's why resource allocation should be left to those with skin in the game. A market is one mechanism for forcing allocators to expose themselves to the downsides of bad investments ... but there are other mechanisms if people have an allergy to markets.