Philosophy of science is something you might be familiar with. It takes a tangential approach to science and it is highly frowned upon in the philosophy community to make judgements about science directly. Instead the idea is to reason about the scientific process intead of trying actively to define it. Let the scientists do their job, then as a philosopher you try to construct an intellectual framework to make sense of what they are doing. The realism-antirealism debate is an example of that today. People argue about whether the science being done at CERN, and the models they produce to explain the observed phenomena, are explaining the "real" world as it is, or if they are simply convenient mathematical theories that attempt to explain empirical phenomena. There is no debate over wether or not they are doing valid science, the debate is over what the process they engage in and the conclusions they draw imply for our understanding of reality, our experience, and what it means to attain knowledge. The people debating these issues are by no means removed from the scientific community either. Most professors who write these papers either are physicists themselves or work closely alongside them and have intimate understandings of the science and math before they start to write. The papers are themselves targeted at other physicists and philosophers with understandings of these topics far more advanced than my own.

I find it unfortunate when people like the commentator above make the claims that they do because it detracts from the respect that the field of philosophy deserves. It may not have the most obvious practical applications but it deserves attention and some of it is really mind-bending stuff. When people like Steven Hawking shit on the subject it's really a shame. They are causing themselves to miss out and they are driving potential great thinkers away.