Mind your scientific language

IN DESCRIBING humankind’s fascination with extra dimensions for The New York Times recently, I made the mistake of mentioning string theory and intelligent design on the same page. My purpose was not to claim they are similar. Quite the opposite. I wanted to describe how both science and religion sometimes provoke heated debates about features of the universe we cannot measure. While string theory has yet to make contact with the empirical universe, it is a legitimate part of science, even if it proves a failure, because its practitioners are ultimately aiming to produce falsifiable results. The proponents of…