Yes, it's true that string theory hasn't panned out in the same way as general relativity or the standard model, but it really bothers me when people criticize

Yes, it's true that string theory hasn't panned out in the same way as general relativity or the standard model, but it really bothers me when people criticize it without even tacit acknowledgement of the fruitful discoveries that came out of the research that has been applied to other fields. The AdS/CFT correspondence alone is worth the effort that was put in, not to mention mirror symmetry in algebraic geometry and everything that was discovered about Calabi-Yau manifolds. String theory research isn't directly useful, but other fields of physics and mathematics reap the benefits.