Lacking hard data, theorists try democracy

Science is not done by popylar vote. But nothing can be taken for granted when string theory is the subject. So when Stephen Shenker, a Stanford University theorist who was moderating a panel discussion here on the future of the putative theory of everything, asked for a show of hands on the fate of a strange number known as the cosmological constant, some 400 physicists and mathematicians wer happy to swallow their doubts and vote (2 pages)