Effective field theory
In physics, an effective field theory is a type of approximation, or effective theory, for an underlying physical theory, such as a quantum field theory or a statistical mechanics model. An effective field theory includes the appropriate degrees of freedom to describe physical phenomena occurring at a chosen length scale or energy scale, while ignoring substructure and degrees of freedom at shorter distances (or, equivalently, at higher energies). Intuitively, one averages over the behavior of the underlying theory at shorter length scales to derive what is hoped to be a simplified model at longer length scales. Effective  field theories typically work best when there is a large separation between length scale of interest and the length scale of the underlying dynamics. Effective field theories have found use in particle physics, statistical mechanics, condensed matter physics, general relativity, and hydrodynamics. They simplify calculations, and allow treatment of dissipation and radiation effects. The renormalization group. Presently, effective field theories are discussed in the context of the renormalization group (RG) where the process of "integrating out" short distance degrees of freedom is made systematic. Although this method is not sufficiently concrete to allow the actual construction of effective field theories , the gross understanding of their usefulness becomes clear through an RG analysis. This method also lends credence to the main technique of constructing effective field theories, through the analysis of symmetries. If there is a single mass scale M in the "microscopic" theory, then the effective field theory can be seen as an expansion in 1/M. The construction of an effective field theory accurate to some power of 1/M requires a new set of free parameters at each order of the expansion in 1/M. This technique is useful for scattering or other processes where the maximum momentum  scale k satisfies the condition k/M≪1. Since effective field theories are not valid at small length scales, they need not be renormalizable. Indeed, the ever expanding number of parameters at each order in 1/M required for an effective field theory means that they are generally not renormalizable in the same sense as quantum electrodynamics which requires only the renormalization of two parameters. Renormalization contradicts the demand called the naturalness paradigm. This has some evidence in the Scale invariance. It is on the other perspective a consequence of the problems beyond the ability to calculate solutions of many-particle  problems found by N-body problem, Three-body problem. There are proximate enhancements to the three-body problem like stability region that provide evidence for new solutions. It is a strict limit to the Standard Model that many particles are not included. There is a blog on the internet by Peter Woit called "not even wrong" that offers some insight into the critics. Or for example, look at publications from Lee Smolin. He published a monograph called The trouble with Physics that dealt with some of the major flaws especially with effective fields in models for describing experimental results. Models  are not theories but are often mistaken for that. Renormalization is different from being a theory in many ways it is just a perturbation approximation. The main problem this has called it a theory is falsifiability. It is made for the purpose to model certain experimental results. So it fits these results and is not a generalization other than that mathematical methodologies are used that pose a wider range of representative overshot over the first application. Compare for example with Scientific theory. Examples of effective field theories. Fermi theory of beta decay. The best-known example of an effective field  theory is the Fermi theory of beta decay. This theory was developed during the early study of weak decays of nuclei when only the hadrons and leptons undergoing weak decay were known. The typical reactions studied were: This theory posited a pointlike interaction between the four fermions involved in these reactions. The theory had great phenomenological success and was eventually understood to arise from the gauge theory of electroweak interactions, which forms a part of the standard model of particle physics. In this more fundamental theory, the interactions are mediated by a flavour-changing gauge boson, the W. The immense  success of the Fermi theory was because the W particle has mass of about 80 GeV, whereas the early experiments were all done at an energy scale of less than 10 MeV. Such a separation of scales, by over 3 orders of magnitude, has not been met in any other situation as yet. BCS theory of superconductivity. Another famous example is the BCS theory of superconductivity. Here the underlying theory is the theory of electrons in a metal interacting with lattice vibrations called phonons. The phonons cause attractive interactions between some electrons, causing them to form Cooper pairs. The length  scale of these pairs is much larger than the wavelength of phonons, making it possible to neglect the dynamics of phonons and construct a theory in which two electrons effectively interact at a point. This theory has had remarkable success in describing and predicting the results of experiments on superconductivity. Effective field theories in gravity. General relativity itself is expected to be the low energy effective field theory of a full theory of quantum gravity, such as string theory or Loop Quantum Gravity. The expansion scale is the Planck mass. Effective field theories have also been used to simplify problems  in General Relativity, in particular in calculating the gravitational wave signature of inspiralling finite-sized objects. The most common EFT in GR is "Non-Relativistic General Relativity" (NRGR), which is similar to the post-Newtonian expansion. Another common GR EFT is the Extreme Mass Ratio (EMR), which in the context of the inspiralling problem is called EMRI. Other examples. Presently, effective field theories are written for many situations.