Yes, there is the question of putting our research money where it could do the most good, but that doesn't mean that it also isn't thoughtful commentary of the difference between better and worse science. One would think that good science would not bother coming up with misleading excuses to spend money on an experiment where there is no strong reason to believe it could result in the discovery of anything important.

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Isn't the problem that the collider will be too big for Standard Model work, but not big enough to test the alternatives?

And economics isn't a science?

Sort of but not really: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/economics/

Is it falsifiable ? Is it testable even ?

Theoretically, yes it is falsifiable. If you had sufficient data about a system you could perfectly forecast micro- and macroeconomic results.

Now, is it testable? Only in a very limited sense. You can suss out trends in a decently empirical way, but because you're working with independent agents you can't really get sufficient data to obtain rigorous results.

Economics is not unlike high energy physics in these respects. You can move the needle in legitimate ways, but there are very hard restrictions that make it more difficult to make rigorous observations.

When people are proven wrong, does the conversation move forward, or do large swathes of people grip onto their beliefs anyway?

That has nothing to do with whether or not something is a science.

It is when the people who don't move on are the people doing the "science."

No, even then it has nothing to do with whether or not the subject of debate is scientific.

Bad deontology on the part of an individual doesn't discredit the field as a whole.