You seem to be confused: if you include nonsense in the category of scientific theory.

The only way Ptolemic theory was overthrown was by comparison to an alternative. String theory similarly needs to be compared to alternatives to see if it is the best model. Otherwise, you fiddle the theory to the facts.

Maybe, these are some of the reasons behind trackbacks being denied? Of course I speculate and wonder as well. Maybe, it will be corrected.

The tone has changed much, and I see lots of support.

You have to remember such dialogues like Solvay were initiated( meetng of minds), to progressively move thinking forward. Qui! NOn?

What could have been gained, if no such dialogue took place? A layman perspective here, is all.

Mathematicians do a thriving trade in theorems of the form “If the Riemann hypothesis were to be true then …”, but this is the first time I have see physics in this form. What’s next?
“If we can ignore GR then …”
“Assuming the existence of a material with 5000 times the heat conductivity of diamond, we propose an experiment to …”

Of course there is a matter of judgement here. The whole existence of LIGO is dependent on “assuming the existence of gravitational waves”. The difference, as I see it, is that we have pretty good reasons to assume the existence of gravitational waves. On the other hand, the argument here is structured like
“assuming the existence of A (for which we have no evidence whatsoever) we prove the existence of B (for which we have no other evidence whatsoever)”.
When LHC makes its first black hole, great, I’ll admit I was wrong. Until then, color me sceptical.

My apologies!

So I think this process is a very good one, regardless. More personal in a blog experience, that we can get right to the heart and truth of the matter eh?

Slac still might be thinking in terms of, the “ole way of doing public relation” for sure. I would not like to think, that the opportunity given to us here, might had been thought in that context of the experiment not working, as Quantum Diaries might have.

The very name string evokes stranges things in people’s minds, and right away, they get up their guard, but if you understood the rise of model speculation, from your predecessors, it is not some ID relation we should call such progress and evolvment of thinking, that we might now correct ourselves today, and say yes, it was the title that did it?

There is a deeper responsibility, that our lack of funding in one area, is not at the revulsion of another area, that we spew forth, all the wrong reasons, and quickly discard the underlying work to extend the whole standard model process.

So I say, continue to persevere, and not think of it as a futile process, but a very good one, that you have shared your information today.

In this case, there are a slew of other possible theories to compare this prediciton to: no micro-blackhole production and micro-blackhole production corresponding to hawking radiation scenarios consistent with an n-dimensional blackhole horizion (with n arbitrary), for example. If you wanted to get kooky, you could come up with far more ideas than this to compare the result to.

But in the end, you do the experiment, you calculate what the error bars are, and if a theory has a prediction outside the error bars, it is ruled out, and if it is consistent with the error bars, than it is a candidate theory for the supposed theory that acutally works. Adding a control is just one way that social and medical science attempts to properly calculate what those error bars are.

I did read the PRL article before writing anything about this and actually directly commented on the paper itself in my posting as “This paper is perfectly reasonable, discussing a proposal for getting information about the number of extra dimensions, assuming Tev-scale gravity (a huge assumption most people think unlikely) and thus production of black holes at the LHC.”

What I was objecting to in my posting was nothing in the PRL article, but the misleading “physicists develop test for string theory” hype in the press release, hype of a sort which one sees time and time again. It seems to me that Joanne and her co-authors agree with me that this kind of headline was a misleading, overhyped way of characterizing their work. The only person who seems to think it wasn’t is Lubos.

You can’t ever get rid of any theory unless you are willing to compare it to another!

In any case, comparison with other theories is sometimes useful (and fascinating if one has two theories which both explain and fit all data within the error bars), but is not a prerequisite for a good theory - comparison with data is what matters.

Mark,
you are describing as an example a straw-man “theory” which is in disagreement with basic observation (hence complete nonsense), so it is not a scientific theory requiring hypothesis testing.

M-theory theory takes well established mathematical theories (Calabi-Yau manifold, etc.) and some established physics and extends it by adding unobserved extra dimensions and superpartners. Yes, it then allows quantum gravity and unification of Standard Model nuclear and electromagnetic forces at 10^16 GeV. It can’t be refuted in the way you describe, simply because it is an extrapolation of existing well-tested theoretical ideas in the Standard Model.