Very well said, Kingrex. Tesla has a nice quote about this.
"Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation."
If it was true 100 years ago, I can only imagine how much worse it might be today.
In cosmology it is the worst. The so-called multiverse is a concept that can impossibly ever be proven, since any universe other than ours is *in principle* outside possible observation.
Fundamental physics is second worst. String theory is now 45 years old and has never been proven. At least new particles that could lend support to the hypothesis*) should be *in principle* observable, but probably at energy levels unobtainable with our particle accelerators. Even the Large Hadron Collider, the most powerful one, never found any, it only triumphantly confirmed the Standard Model of physics, e.g., Higgs boson. They upgraded the collision energy, but still nothing found. Hope springs eternal. Entire scientific careers are on the line, and few involved with string theory jump off the crazy bandwagon. Famous physicist Lee Smolin to his credit did, and wrote a book about it, "The Trouble with Physics".
As a biochemist I am dependent on experiment and observation every single day. It keeps me grounded in reality and humble, because often things don't work the way envisioned and hypothesized. You can imagine my level of disdain, even contempt, at what some colleagues in cosmology and physics call "science" -- a redefined observation-less free for all.
Yet most scientists, not just biochemists, remain grounded in experiment and observation, the foundational bedrock of science. So do many fundamental physicists, the ones not wedded to string theory. So science overall still nicely marches on, for the progress of human knowledge and the benefit of humankind. The mRNA based Covid vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna) are among the latest triumphs in new science-based technology (even though the more traditional J&J and AstraZeneca are still excellent as well). So are the recent explorations of Mars, for example, or the ones of Saturn and Pluto (just spectacular).
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*) very falsely string theory is called a "theory"; look up what a scientific theory actually is, like gravity, atomic theory, quantum mechanics or general relativity
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