Started January, 1999
This file of letters (mainly written by myself - ones that I intend to send or have already sent to magazines) exists in order that they may see the light of day! There have been occasional letters published critical of quantum theory, but not many. New Scientist has now published a few by Max Wallis, championing Stochastic Electrodynamics (SED), and recently (e.g. October 30, 2004) a couple of others, but there is still no sign of my own. The story is similar for Physics World, though there I have had the one success (see 03:09:01 entry below). [I do write other letters, by the way! I write frequently to experimenters and theorists, but mostly on rather technical matters ...]
30:12:05: J. Phys. B's rejection of my "homodyne" paper. I have not been offered a chance to respond to the referees. Note: the revised version of this paper on the proposed loophole-free Bell test is now at quant-ph/0512141
09:08:05: My response to PRA's message rejecting my paper on Grangier's team's proposed loophole-free Bell test.
08:08:05: New Scientist, commenting on their reputation for balanced reporting.
15:07:05: Yet another letter to New Scientist, ridiculing idea of backwards time.
21:11:04: The last letter was not published, so here is another, following up Ralph Estling's contribution.
02:11:04: Added yet another letter to New Scientist to my collection: "Entangled or not?"
02:10:04: Another letter to Physical Review Letters, complaining about misleading titles and abstracts.
20:11:03 Letter to John Cornwell (cc New Scientist) re failure of the peer review system etc..
27:11:03 Letter to New Scientist arguing against Ben Craven's of 22:11:03, which had quoted the standard belief that we could not explain everything using common sense.
22:08:03: Letter to New Scientist re Dayton
Miller's evidence for aether drift. Neil Russell's article, ("Fabric of the final frontier", 16 August
2003, p 22) confirms my impression that present-day people working in the field
have never even heard of Miller.
27:06:03: More to New Scientist re confusion of simulation with real experiments: Charles Choi (June 21, page 17) reports on a simulation of "molecules without electrons".
09:05:03: Sorry but I've been a bit angry recently. This letter to New Scientist reads more like a personal attack than I meant. What I meant to criticise was the way in which papers on subjects such as quantum information confuse real and thought-experiments.
30:12:02: Letter to Physics World re Dayton Miller and the evidence for aether drift.
19:04:02 The March issue of the American Journal of Physics -- a journal aimed at teachers of physics -- is devoted to quantum theory. It includes a couple of papers related to quantum optics and the Bell tests, omitting to mention that local realism has not been ruled out. I have written to two of the authors. One of the letters, to C H Holbrow, I have also sent to the editors. If students are doing experiments to demonstrate the existence of the photon, why not ask them to do further experiments to show that this conclusion is false?
23:02:02 Letter to Physics World re the fact that a training in quantum mechanics is not appreciated as a job qualification. It is a response to a letter that suggested it was pointless to teach advanced quantum mechanics to people who were destined for jobs in the financial services. My suggestion; "It is pointless to teach ... quantum mechanics".
08:02:02 Another letter to New Scientist re ridiculous quantum-theoretical claims concerning teleportation (February 9, page 5, "All tied up" : My indignant response, in defense of sanity!)
05:09:01 Could there be more than a grain of truth in John Notton's humorous essay, "How to create and publish a great theory" (Physics World, August 2001, p 56)? I wrote to Notton and to Physics World.
03:09:01 One of my letters (submitted 03:09:01) has actually been published (Physics World, November, 2001, p17)! And they have not edited out the links to my papers, or the controversial claims! It's about quantum entanglement and the lack of experimental evidence. Re the realist explanations for the experiments, I write:
"Such explanations are not hard to find. They merely don't get published in the top journals".
18:08:01 Letter to the American Journal of Physics criticising a long article by Prof Franck Laloë for giving a misleading picture of the realist alternatives to the "quantum entanglement" interpretation of the Bell test results, and not giving useful references on the loopholes. This letter has led to interesting correspondence with Laloë and inspired a new paper.
20:05:01 I've been corresponding with Tom Van Flandern re the speed of gravity. I think it goes at speed c, and think I've found a major flaw in one of his arguments.
02:04:01 New Scientist responds: Bill Morris, the experimenter concerned in the Ganzfeld experiments (ESP ones) explains more detail. My hypothesis was wrong. Worth a try, though, and I remain convinced that there is some logical explanation.
24:03:01 Re-write of 10:03:01 letter re ESP, responding to another correspondent.
10:03:01 Letter to New Scientist debunking an ESP experiment they had put on their web site.
02:03:01 I've written to Jim Ryder, with copies to Physics
World, New Scientist and David Kielpinski re why
physics students are finding the subject so difficult.
In my view it is because so much of it is nonsense, based on
misinterpretations of experiments. I discuss the Michelson-Morley
re-evaluation by Dayton Miller (there is an aether only
not the one they looked for) and the EPR (Bell test) experiments,
concentrating on the recent
test involving pairs of ions in a trap. Kielpinski was
on the team. I wrote separately to him a few days ago asking
for clarification of some points. Whatever the truth of the
matter, it is ridiculous to suggest, as a Physics World article
does, that there are nonlocal correlations here and it is time for
local realists to "be realistic and admit defeat"!
The particles concerned are not even measured separately.
20:11:00 Letter to New Scientist re Robert Park's "Voodoo Science" and the misrepresentation of facts about cold fusion; new section on phi-waves in my FAQ file.
19:10:00 One can but try! I don't suppose they will print it, but I've sent in yet another letter. The New Scientist had declared on its cover: "One man thinks that the electron has been split. If he's right its curtains for quantum theory".
I wrote to query a point of fact - the article claimed that scientists have produced
entangled photons - introducing my letter with "Surely I can't be the only
reader to find some of the sensational statements in your magazine 'unscientific'
and profoundly irritating? This time, for once, I am in agreement with the
conclusion - that the splitting of the electron or something similar ought to
spell the end of quantum theory as the accepted description of the real world. Let's get our facts right, though."
27:09:00 Will the authorities wake up? Steven Brown,
after venturing to my site, has written to NIST (the National
Institute of Standards and Technology) suggesting that, as a matter of
national security, the evidence for non-locality should be investigated before
the state commits matters of national importance to encryption using methods
that depend on it. Great! Though, as I've pointed out in some of my
papers, there are real correlations waiting to be exploited so, hopefully, only
these would be used in practice. It is not any direct risk to national
security that I'm worried about, only the corruption of science causing wastage
of resources and danger to our sanity!
18:09:00 Follow-up from the 29:07:00 letter: message addressed to Ian Percival that I have now sent to many people: the Geneva speed of quantum information experiment is even more absurd than I had thought!
29:07:00 Letter to New Scientist re the Geneva group, who have been working out the speed of quantum information but have yet to establish that is exists! (See N.S, July 29, p12).
12:12:99 Wrote to New Scientist on the subject of faith. QM at present is very much a matter of faith rather than science!
October, 1999: Heard from Physics Today that they were considering the letter I wrote back in March . [Nothing came of this]
13:6:99: Letter to New Scientist re their editorial on the censorship of science, June 5. They had quoted the web site of the journal "Index".
24:4:99: I've drafted a letter to New Scientist on Mark Hadley's time-warps. I'm sending him a copy for comment before submitting.
19:3:99: I have at last sent of a revised version of my 25:2:99 letter to Physics Today.
11:3:99: I've just written another letter to New Scientist, re their persistent mis-reporting of the evidence for nonlocality, in this case by Mark Buchanan.
25:2:99: Have you read the correspondence in Physics Today, February 1999? Pages and pages of the quantum theory experts discussing its interpretation. But they (almost) all assume that it gets all the right answers, and my EPR work suggests otherwise! So how about writing and telling them what you think? I've put some of what I think in a file, The Status of Quantum Theory.
20:2:99: Here is a letter that ought to serve as a model! Not by myself but by Russell Oppenheimer, and not about QT. See what you think. I liked it, and, what's more, the New Scientist actually published it (20 Feb 1999, p53), after not only giving Roy Frieden a full article but running the idea in the editorial!
15:1:99: A letter to the New Scientist. I have been trying to get them to publicise my work for years now. It should be a good story for them - it was one of their book reviews (in 1992 or so) that started me on the EPR trail. But if they are not yet ready to do that, I'm asking them at least to refrain from inaccuracies!