(UD Editors: We didn’t know what “SUSY” was. It means “supersymmetry.”)
When this happens within the corridors of high-energy physics, then science is in a bad way.
Tomasso Dorigo, in a recent blog entry, chastens those who determinedly cling to SUSY despite no show of evidence for it at the LHC.
Here’s what he says (but, of course, just plug in “Darwinism” where you see “SUSY”):
What SUSY enthusiasts in fact do when they resort to the “Nature chose elsewhere to hide” argument is to manifest that their prior belief in SUSY being the correct theory of nature is 100%. This, in a Bayesian formalism, can be mathematically described as a “point mass” prior probability density function (PDF): a Dirac delta function, containing all the probability at one value (whatever value we choose to describe “SUSY is true” on a real axis). Now, the problem with a point mass prior PDF is that no experimental observation -none at all- inserted in the Bayesian equation can produce a posterior which is different from the prior: a granitic belief cannot be shaken, regardless of the evidence against it !
And, then again (replacing “LHC” by “new experimental evidence”):
Keeping oneselves anchored to a point-mass PDF that “SUSY is correct” equates to dismissing as garbage all the negative results of the LHC searches. I will say more: it equates to saying that it is useless to do experimental research, because SUSY might be hiding where we have no access with particle collisions or other experiments. Given that, and given that we must already be sure that SUSY is correct, why searching for it ?