Theorists Practice A Form Of Religion

They sometimes believe in things that cannot be proven or disproven (witness “string theory”).

When bad things happen to good theories, some don’t question their faith in the theory, but invoke far-fetched rationalizations (witness “supersymmetry”, or “WIMPs”, or…).

Fortunately, science evolves via a self-correction mechanism. It may be slow and suffer set-backs, but in the end the best ideas (like General Relativity), prevail because of conceptual elegance and empirical vindication.