This dichotomy - either it's proven or it's nothing - has been alluded to in several comments here, and shows up whenever similarly far-reaching hypotheses are

This dichotomy - either it's proven or it's nothing - has been alluded to in several comments here, and shows up whenever similarly far-reaching hypotheses are raised on HN. The thing is, though, you need a hypothesis before you can get to a proof [1], and a hypothesis that is consistent with everything we think we know is a significant advance, especially when the absence of such a hypothesis has ben gnawing at the foundations of physics for several decades. The history of science provides plenty of examples. Take the atomic theory for example, where Einstein's Brownian paper theory is generally regarded as the step that silenced the positivist opposition. Does that mean that none of the prior work by Boltzmann and in chemistry was newsworthy? On the contrary, it paved the way to Einstein's paper, and was an essential part of the history. [1] Not that scientific theories are ever formally proven, of course, but that line of argument would be a diversion here.