Supersymmetry (SUSY) is a perfect example for how propaganda in physics works. There are four main motivations for SUSY that are repeated over and over in talks, textbooks and papers. However, if you ask students or even senior SUSY researchers questions about these arguments for SUSY, it almost always quickly turns out that they never really spent time thinking about them. The arguments for SUSY that are quoted over and over again are certainly not as strong as they are made to be. However, the real problem is that too many people don't know about “the other side”. Instead of an open and honest discussion the standard story is repeated over and over again, until everyone believes it.
So here are the four standard arguments and possible ways to see things differently:
Now the first one is no longer valid and maybe never a good idea in the first place. The second, third and fourth are weak arguments anyway. Thus it is not surprising that many SUSY researches are stopping to work on SUSY topics now. However there is a group of researches that can not stop and thus needs to find new motivation for SUSY: string theorists. SUSY must be correct, because otherwise string theory is in deep trouble. Therefore lots of smart people start thinking spent lots of time to find some good sounding reasons why SUSY is inevitable. This is how we end with an article like this. Lots of highbrow mathematics and complicated wording, which impresses students and laymans and leaves the impression that SUSY is inevitable.
One last thing. Everything here could be completely wrong. However, the thing we want to point out is that there is no open discussion of these issues. The textbooks and papers all repeat the standard lore without any critical and balanced discussion of alternative points of views. This illustrates how propaganda works in physics. Some arguments that sound reasonable at a first glance a repeated over and over again until almost everyone believes them. Then every discussion about possible flaws in these arguments are immediately killed by citing authorities and calling everyone with different views a crackpot.