> given the uselessness of the field It's not useless, though. String theory can be a fad (or "difficult to prove", per Witten) but some of the mathematics use

> given the uselessness of the field It's not useless, though. String theory can be a fad (or "difficult to prove", per Witten) but some of the mathematics used in its research or "trying to prove it" have been used in other fields.