The article never outlines what the alluded-to downsides are (p-hacking, spurious correlations) which makes me wonder if the article’s sourcing leaned too heavily on advocates of this theory-free approach, which was the subject of a Wired cover story a few years ago, so it must be true, amirite?

Reading the article makes me wonder what Woit (author of Not Even Wrong book and blog) thinks about this and how it dovetails with the epistemological morass the string theory people have gotten themselves into.