> There's always been a cycle of conjuring a theory that needs to wait for experimental advancements to catch up. And I would agrue that this strongly propels science forward. If we name these theories as "bad science," then how would we ever advance?

There's a problem, though, isn't there, with a hypothesis that can be tested in theory but not in practice until some unknown point in the future? Especially if there's a risk of the theory being tweaked if the evidence doesn't come up - "ok, we didn't find what we were looking for with this particle collider, but if we build a bigger one we will..." (I think in Lakatos' terms that would be an "auxiliary hypothesis" created protect the core hypothesis.)

As the article points out this is a problem for Lakatos' ideas, as sometimes "degenerating" science does produce good results. Maybe that theory scientists have been pushing for a half a century without being empirically tested will turn out to be correct when the technology (or funding) is there. Or maybe you'll have wasted 50 years.

Thus this kind of science is risky. More risky than science which can be tested straight away, or in the near future. The article argues for honesty about this risk and a clear assessment of it when funding or supporting science.

To pick up on /u/ShalmaneserIII's comment, there's a difference between "can be tested now" and "can't be tested yet, but we can tell you how it should be done" and "can't be tested". The middle category falls somewhere between the ideal of the first and the junk of the last.