You say you haven't understood his position, you mean from reading this blog post which isn't supposed to be even an overview of his position? Instead he has wr

You say you haven't understood his position, you mean from reading this blog post which isn't supposed to be even an overview of his position? Instead he has written an entire book elaborating on his view, which seems to be a well-regarded text in the very small niche of anti-string theory popular books. Have you read his book? I think it is a perfectly valid and appropriate mechanism for hashing out academic disagreement and further should be welcomed by anyone who appreciates string theory. I personally haven't read his book but will be very surprised if he doesn't address your point that String theory makes good mathematics. I also personally think a simple answer for that objection would be that this is a perfectly valid reason to research it provided you are honest that is the only demonstrable benefit for it so far (which will then have implications on which funding pots you can propose to). String theory advocates (particularly the extreme ones, such as Greene) that Woit targets seem to imply that the benefit of string theory to mankind has far exceeded other pure mathematics branches' contribution (for example category theory), particularly that it helped us figure out the unification of all known laws of physics when there are practically zero evidence that it managed that.