Relying too heavily on theoretical models in physics poses several risks:
1. Dogmatic Attachment: Physicists may become overly attached to certain theories, leading to dogmatic thinking and resistance to new ideas. This can stifle scientific progress by diverting resources towards established theories rather than exploring fresh perspectives.
2. Speculation Over Experimentation: Theoretical models can lead to speculative ideas that are not grounded in empirical evidence. This can result in "mindless production of mathematical fiction," as seen in theories like string theory and supersymmetry, which have failed to yield experimental confirmation.
3. Aesthetic Bias: Theoretical physics often relies on aesthetic criteria such as simplicity and elegance, which can be misleading. These criteria may lead to theories that are mathematically appealing but lack empirical support.
The physics community must correct and rectify the risks associated with an over-reliance on unreal theoretical models in physics.
Actually, it is the theoreticians segment of the physics community that needs this reassessment, a segment of the physics community often involuntarily taken as representing the whole physics community.
Whatever dogmatic, speculative and aesthetics trends occurs in the community plagues only the theoreticians segment of the community, A sort of self inflicted painting in a corner of their own making.
Ever since the beginning of the 20th century, experimentalists and engineers have been somewhat indifferent or at best dismayed by their unproductive behavior while they themselves have constantly kept on discovering and fine tuning their comprehension of physical reality, as they developed all the successful technology that we are now benefitting from.
For example, despite the now deep knowledge available that all macroscopic "masses" such as the earth rest mass is in fact an accumulation of "stable systems of smaller masses", the atoms, that are themselves stable systems of the only carriers of mass in the universe, the charged and massive elementary particles of which all atoms are made, theoreticians still treat the Earth mass, the mass of the Sun, etc. as if they were solid masses as they were treated in an idealized manner from the classical mechanics perspective. No progress was made in the theoreticians community even with the advent of SR and GR, that still treat masses in this manner at the astronomical level,
theoretical physicists who need this re-evaluation, because these physicists (mathematical physicists) are considered as the intermediate representatives between the whole community of physicists and the use of theories of the community of mathematicians.
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