Reddit reviews Higher Speculations: Grand Theories and Failed Revolutions in Physics and Cosmology

Science writer Jim Baggott called the multiverse, string theory, supersymmetry, or inflation genre “fairy-tale science.” Historian Helge Kragh coined the term “higher speculations,” and Peter Woit, more recently, suggested the name “fake physics.” Unfortunately Fake Science is not going away, but becoming ever more widespread because it shares several characteristics with Fake News:

1. It’s clickbait. While getting anyone to pay attention to the solution of a difficult technical problem in quantum field theory is likely to be nearly impossible, topics like “What happened before the Big Bang?” and “Did you know that there’s someone exactly identical to you somewhere else in the multiverse, and they’re dating Scarlet Johansson?” are sure crowd-pleasers. This motivates some physicists, and even more journalists, with the latter having the much better excuse that their livelihood depends on getting people to click on their stories.
   
2. It’s a propaganda tactic designed to mask failure. The main reason for the current mania for the Multiverse is the failure of the string theory unification program. Some who have invested their lives in this program have decided to use this sort of Fake Physics as an excuse to avoid admitting failure.
   
3. The group driving this is small but determined, ideology-driven and well-funded by rich people with an ax to grind. String theorists are sponsored by multimedia tycoons behind BBS and gray economy fraudsters like Yuri Milner who use them in their a corruption and money laundering schemes. It's a corruption of science at highest levels of both sides.
   
4. While Multiverse Fake Physics plays a large role in media coverage of fundamental physics, partially because of funding from the Templeton Foundation, there are very few actual papers on the subject and “research” in this area is a small fraction of what theorists are doing. The majority of the community is unwilling to take on the unpleasant and unrewarding task of challenging them. Most physicists just hope that if they ignore this it will go away.