Nowadays the death of fundamental physics is so obvious that this fact has even entered popular culture:

Leonard: "I know I said physics is dead, but it is the opposite of dead. If anything, it is undead, like a zombie." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDNP9KOEdh0

In the physics establishment, only Peter Woit is bold enough to discuss the issue:

"Fundamental physical theory may now be over, replaced with a pseudo-science, but at least that means that things in this subject can't get any worse." https://math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=12604

"As seems increasingly all too possible, we're now at an endpoint of fundamental physics." http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=9444

"There's a very real danger...that we will in our lifetimes see the end of fundamental physics as a human endeavor." http://math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=8392

"As far as this stuff goes, we're now not only at John Horgan's "End of Science", but gone past it already and deep into something different." http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=7266

At the same time, fundamental physics is invincible, as the following quotations clearly show:

Ethan Siegel: "Scientific Theories Never Die, Not Unless Scientists Choose To Let Them. When it comes to science, we like to think that we formulate hypotheses, test them, throw away the ones that fail to match, and continue testing the successful one
until only the best ideas are left. But the truth is a lot muddier than that. The actual process of science involves tweaking your initial hypothesis over and over, trying to pull it in line with what we already know. [...] By the addition of enough
extra free parameters, caveats, behaviors, or modifications to your theory, you can literally salvage any idea. As long as you're willing to tweak what you've come up with sufficiently, you can never rule anything out." https://www.forbes.com/sites/
startswithabang/2017/11/16/scientific-theories-never-die-not-unless-scientists-choose-to-let-them/

Sabine Hossenfelder (Bee): "The criticism you raise that there are lots of speculative models that have no known relevance for the description of nature has very little to do with string theory but is a general disease of the research area. Lots of
theorists produce lots of models that have no chance of ever being tested or ruled out because that's how they earn a living. The smaller the probability of the model being ruled out in their lifetime, the better. It's basic economics. Survival of the '
fittest' resulting in the natural selection of invincible models that can forever be amended." http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=9375

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Pentcho Valev

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Can a single false axiom prove so malignant as to kill the whole branch of science called "physics"? Yes, if it is Einstein's 1905 constant-speed-of-light postulate:

"He opened by explaining how Einstein's theory of relativity is the foundation of every other theory in modern physics and that the assumption that the speed of light is constant is the foundation of that theory. Thus a constant speed of light is
embedded in all of modern physics and to propose a varying speed of light (VSL) is worse than swearing! It is like proposing a language without vowels." http://www.thegreatdebate.org.uk/VSLRevPrnt.html

"If there's one thing every schoolboy knows about Einstein and his theory of relativity, it is that the speed of light in vacuum is constant. No matter what the circumstances, light in vacuum travels at the same speed...The speed of light is the very
keystone of physics, the seemingly sure foundation upon which every modern cosmological theory is built, the yardstick by which everything in the universe is measured...The constancy of the speed of light has been woven into the very fabric of physics,
into the way physics equations are written, even into the notation used. Nowadays, to "vary" the speed of light is not even a swear word: It is simply not present in the vocabulary of physics." https://www.amazon.com/Faster-Than-Speed-Light-Speculation/
dp/0738205257

"The whole of physics is predicated on the constancy of the speed of light...So we had to find ways to change the speed of light without wrecking the whole thing too much." https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8q87gk/light-speed-slowed

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