Oh Ads, you mean that space that emphatically does NOT describe our universe? Ads/CFT is overblown. It's just an interesting mathematical result that hasn't borne much meaningful fruit for actual physics.
I'm sorry, but string theorists absolutely do prevent funding other research because funding is finite, grad students have to research something their advisors think is worthy, and their advisors have their heads full of "beautiful math" so that's what they tell their students to work on if they want their PhDs, and that's what they hire their post grads to work on if they want a job.
Only now as the strong theory haze has started dissipating are we starting to see novel approaches, like Oppenheim's post quantum gravity theory.
I'm sorry, but string theorists absolutely do prevent funding other research because funding is finite, grad students have to research something their advisors think is worthy, and their advisors have their heads full of "beautiful math" so that's what they tell their students to work on if they want their PhDs, and that's what they hire their post grads to work on if they want a job.
Only now as the strong theory haze has started dissipating are we starting to see novel approaches, like Oppenheim's post quantum gravity theory.