Those people were mostly ignored.

In 1984, the discovery of anomaly cancellation, heterotic string, and Calabi-Yau compactification led to a cartoon version of the Standard Model. Initially very few Calabi-Yau manifolds were known, but mathematicians eventually found thousands…

Does this make string theory untestable? Harvey thinks this is too strong a statement, but that it does make test more difficult. It is also hard to know which gauge groups and representations to use for the gauge theories underlying the Standard Model. Harvey says that the fundamental problem with testing string theory is the energy scale we have access to.

Audience: are you thinking of string theory as a framework and not as a theory? E.g. like gauge field theory

Harvey: Yes, that’s a reasonable point of view. Yes that’s what I’m proposing.