She worked on quantum gravity for fucks sake. Have you ever seen a description of quantum gravity that didn't count as theoretical?
Pfff. The magnitude of the mathwank projection of quantum gravity is even slightly larger than that of string theory[1]. It's just that being so easy to point out the reasonable shortcomings of string theory distracts from Mme SH's underlying message of "their mathwank is crowding out grant money from my mathwank."
Don't get me wrong, I think the GP's "mathwank" label is ... tricky. Theoretical Math is a Good Thing. Theoretical Physicists trying to come up with Mathematical models for things are also a Good Thing. Abusing a Good Thing is a Bad Thing though, and some of the physicists in these fields are doing that. So yeah, mathwank.
[1] some approaches developed in some corners of string theory (which is a ... wide net with many corners) turned out to be useful for modeling other things in Physics that have direct connection with experiments (and hence no connection with string theory).