From:
Caroline Thompson [ch.thompson1@virgin.net]
Sent:
08 August 2005 23:32
To:
letters@newscientist.com
Subject:
Balanced reporting?
The
Editor
New
Scientist
Dear
Sir
Yes
indeed it is good, as Simon Adams wrote (July 30, p 19), to see the New Scientist
publishing a challenge to the mainstream theory of the big bang, but can you be
said to have an equally balanced view regarding the micro scale? Not a single experiment has ever
conclusively ruled out local realism, but this is not the impression given in
New Scientist or, indeed, in *any* reputable journal. Book after book is appearing that takes "quantum
entanglement" for granted and produces abstruse arguments trying to
reconcile its readers to the impossible.
I've recently read some of Nick Herbert's "Quantum Reality"
for instance, and it made me squirm. If
only he'd known what I know! This book
was published in 1985, but things have not improved since. We find Amir Aczel's
"Entanglement", for example, equally certain, despite the fact that
he interviewed people who should have known better.
If you
want to really earn the balanced reputation that Simon attributes to you,
please publish something on the imperfections of the actual "Bell test
experiments". The experts know
there are "loopholes" in them.
Few, however, understand just how these work. One or more has been present in *every* Bell test experiment to
date, and between them they open the way for perfectly ordinary explanations
for the observations. No need for
faster than light signals -- no need, in fact, for any communication between
the two sides at all.
The
observed correlations can be explained simply by assuming shared information
from the source, but to understand this you *must* take account of the details,
both regarding the conduct of the experiments and the logic of the tests
used. The various "Bell
inequalities" are not all equivalent (do readers even know that more than
one exists?) and the versions used in practice are nowhere near as rigorous as
the original. Journalists and
scientists alike have simplified the picture by ignoring later versions. This is perhaps understandable, but in view
of the critical importance of the principle at stake, why do they seem to have
taken the experimental claims on trust?
The more often a Bell test is violated, the more justified people feel
in assuming the loopholes don't matter, but what if every single test is
*biased*?.
As the
myth of entanglement grows, the story being passed on from one writer to the
next, sight is being lost of realities known thirty years ago. How many journalists these days understand
the significance of phrases such as "modulo the fair sampling
assumption"? Is fair sampling not,
they ask themselves, merely the natural assumption in any well-conducted
experiment? The net result is that they
are unintentionally misleading us. The
"mind-boggling" phenomenon we are being asked to believe in is in
fact still just speculation.
For
more on the Bell tests, see my web site:
http://freespace.virgin.net/ch.thompson1/
Yours
sincerely
Caroline
Or return to main letters page