This has a lot to do with PR and how it relates to research and development funding. The root problem is that, with regards to funding (as far as I can tell), a headline in a popular newspaper or popular-science magazine is worth orders of magnitude more than a peer-reviewed paper in a journal. This will be a problem for all of the sciences in the near future, as long as there are differing tracks of research being explored.
The scientific method dictates that something should be ideally explored until it's dis-proven. Unfortunately, the realities of limited R&D funding dictate that only the most popular, or public, research tracks tend to attract the funding. This has a carry-on effect in that new students in these fields are forced to go into the most popular fields of study, lest they not get funding.
WRT string theory, have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trouble_with_Physics . I'm not sure I 100% agree with Lee Smolin on this (he has a definite axe to grind), but the points he raises are equally applicable to any field of contentious, or cutting edge research.
Solving this is difficult. Obviously education of the general populous will help, but in lieu of this, perhaps we need mandated percentages of funding to each viable research track (a solution rife with problems of it's own).
In any case, this is a hard problem to solve, and will certainly cause problems in many areas of fundamental research in the future.