For example, while the Large Hadron Collider has so far failed to show evidence of supersymmetry, many have essentially said that the collision wasn’t powerful enough or that some small modifications are all that’s needed to fit the theory they love with the data they gathered.
“Supersymmetry has been around since 1974, for 42 years, and it doesn’t really have any evidence that it’s there. But people really bet their careers on this,” Gleiser explains. “Many physicists have spent 40 years working on this, which is basically their whole professional life.”
That may change in in ten years or so, he says, when further advances to the LHC could force the hangers-on to let go if the data they need doesn’t materialize. “If we don’t find evidence, people who still stick to it after that are doing it as a philosophical practice,” he says. More.
See also: The war on falsifiability (why it matters)
and In search of a road to reality
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