string theory lied to us and now science communication is hard

This reminds me of the recent "proof" of the ABC Conjecture in maths. Shinichi Mochizuki published a huge, incredibly dense series of papers which he claims proves this long standing conjecture, most mathematicians who try to understand give up because of how dense it is, Fields medallist Peter Scholz spends some time trying and finds what he believes in a hole in the proof, Mochizuki responds with something very close to "nuhuh, you're dumb, there's no gap". We've now reached a stage where most mathematicians have given up trying to understand it, most either believe it contains at least one significant error, or if it's right Mochizuki's not done his job of actually communicating his ideas well enough, but there's a small group of true believers who insist the proof's right and they understand it (though they can't manage to explain it to the rest of the mathematical community).