If there were as many PhDs working on stuff like twistors, loop quantum gravity, MOND, gravitational wave function collapse, etc as there are working on string

If there were as many PhDs working on stuff like twistors, loop quantum gravity, MOND, gravitational wave function collapse, etc as there are working on string theory and dark matter/energy I'd agree the argument was made up. But they're vastly outweighed by the PhDs working in String Theory which is going on 50 years now with nothing really to show for it experimentally. And they do claim that they know the truth, and they defend their PhDs, and their grants and grad students, with rationalizations that aren't testable and don't admit any evidence. It very much seems like a religion. Nobody has patched the holes in the theories that I mentioned, but almost nobody works on them, so the problems become self-fulfilling. And it just isn't that easy these days to have a single Einstein come along and upend the apple cart with a handful of rapid fire papers.