The Editor

The New Scientist

13:6:99

Dear Sir

I followed your lead (editorial, June 5) to http://www.indexoncensorship.org. Index is right, of course. Even "hard" science is not as pure as it could be. Theories are upheld as a result of faith and group loyalty, with persistent failures to tell the world about "awkward data".

I fear that the New Scientist itself is not without blame! Take the matter of quantum entanglement - the supposed weird ability of quantum particles that have once interacted to influence each other instantaneously after they have separated, however far. Experimenters are claiming to have verified this experimentally! (Ominously, others are now making careers in "quantum computing" and allied areas, building on these quantum "facts".)

But there are people in the world who know better. They have looked in the waste bins, and fished out that awkward data. They have removed the distorting mirrors. It is only after great perseverance that there is now a possibility that one of my papers on this may be published in Physical Review A. It has taken two years, three submissions, one appeal and much correspondence, and success is still far from in the bag. It was submitted in March and they informed me yesterday that they "regret the delay in obtaining a report".

It would help if the New Scientist had not discarded so many of my letters! Is it not possible that open recognition of the existence and honest efforts of "realists" (without the denigrating epithets such as "naive"!) would help the progress of science? The general public deserve the opportunity to judge for themselves. They have been bamboozled into believing that rationality goes by the board at the quantum level, and only the experts can possibly understand it. Everyone can understand that explanations involving instantaneous action at a distance are not valid science!

For more on these subjects, see my web site, http://www.aber.ac.uk/~cat.

Caroline H Thompson