From:
Caroline Thompson
Sent: 27
November 2003 17:41
To:
letters@newscientist.com
Subject:
Common sense
The Editor
New
Scientist
Dear Sir
Ben Craven (letters,
November 22, p 35) quotes the standard "facts" of the success of
quantum and relativity theories to argue that "common sense is a very
blunt scientific instrument indeed".
I would respectfully suggest that the experimental evidence is by no
means strong enough to rule out the possibility that both of the above theories
will some day be replaced by common sense ones. For instance, even if no clear numerical discrepancy is ever
found in Einstein's predictions for the bending of light near massive bodies,
there is (as was recognised in the 1920's) an alternative way of describing
this. One can simply assume it to be a
refraction effect, with no mention of warped space-time. In the case of quantum theory, there is
every reason (see below) to expect that its weirdest prediction --
"quantum entanglement", the instantaneous influence of an apparatus
setting at one place on a measurement at another -- will eventually be shown
not to match the real world.
Perhaps if
Craven were to read John Waller's "Fabulous Science" (OUP, 2002,
reviewed in New Scientist by Martin Ince on 16 November, 2002) it might help
him to gain a more realistic perspective?
Take the fact that " ... a perfectly legitimate convention has
arisen among scientists by which most inexplicable results are casually
suppressed" (Theodosius Dobzhansky, geneticist) together with the known
contradictions within the accepted theories and known existence in many
instances of alternatives and you have, I think, carte blanche for the creation
of understandable science. The
observations do not compel counter-intuitive explanations.
It is not
only inexplicable results that are suppressed.
Waller gives another enlightening quote, from Sciama. He is talking about the famous 1919 eclipse
results, which, as is now becoming more widely known, were distinctly
ambiguous, but I know from my own experience in some much more recent
experiments that the problem may be widespread. Sciama says: "... one might suspect that if the observers
did not know what value they were 'supposed' to obtain, their published results
might vary over a greater range than they actually do". Given this wider range, the 1919 results
could not discriminate between the rival theories.
In the case
I have studied (the "Bell tests", currently accepted by most has
having established quantum entanglement) the crime may be even more
serious. The tests used have not been
the original, strict, ones proposed by Bell in the 1960's but modified ones, chosen
partly for a perfectly legitimate reason (the experiments could not be made to
comply with Bell's assumption that all particles were detected) but partly,
dare I suggest, because it was possible using the modified tests to get the
answer many people thought was "right". It was the answer that matched quantum theory predictions, and
the general consensus appears to be that it is impossible for quantum theory to
be wrong in view of its uniform success in other, quite unrelated,
contexts! But, as the experts in the
field now know full well, the Bell tests to date have all had
"loopholes" that allow for common sense interpretations. To claim success here is thus not logical.
For more on
common sense ("local realist") interpretations of actual Bell test
experiments see my web site, http://users.aber.ac.uk/cat , or various published
articles, in particular:
Thompson, C
H, "The Tangled Methods of Quantum Entanglement Experiments",
Accountability in Research, vol. 6, no. 4, pp 311-332 (1999), available at
http://users.aber.ac.uk/cat/Tangled/tangled.html
I wonder how
many people in this world have taken the trouble to read the original
experimental reports to try and understand what was really measured, what
assumptions made, in critical Bell test experiments such as Alain Aspect et
al.'s of 1981-2? Einstein's success in
1919 seems, according to Waller, to have been established on the basis of the
opinion of just two people: Eddington (leader of the project) and the then
Astronomer Royal. (J J Thompson,
President of the Royal Society, trusted their judgement and announced
Einstein's success at a meeting. The
Press leapt on the story of warped space-time, and there was no going
back.) Admittedly, with the Bell tests,
more than two qualified people have studied the experimental details, but they are
hugely outnumbered by those who have (as shows clearly from the references they
give) simply quoted the accepted results at second hand. Perhaps, when the early experiments were
done, there was a genuine problem in that nobody could see how common sense
explanations could fit the observations, but things have changed. More "loopholes" have been
discovered, leading to ideas for more comprehensive sets of experiments that
should, in my opinion, reveal that it is local realism, not quantum theory,
that is the winner. It is high time to
stop and reconsider quantum theory's claim of unbroken success.
Yours
faithfully
Caroline H
Thompson