The Editor

The New Scientist

11:3:99

Dear Sir

Has Mark Buchanan ("The end to uncertainty", 6 March, p25) "finally comprehend[ed] the illusory nature of reality" (see Robert Oppenheimer's delightful letter, 20 February, p53), I wonder? Either this or he has started seeing ghosts, which is a pity as he otherwise seems to be on the track of rationality, quoting doubts on the authority of Niels Bohr. The original paper by Dürr et al. on which the article was based says nothing about the occult, yet here we are with "ghost photons" all over the place. Not that I blame him, as he is surely not the only one to be confused!

But my letter is not really about this. It is my old grouch once again. Why, oh why, does he have to re-enforce the popular myth that "experiments have provided strong evidence that ... 'non-local' linking of distinct parts of the world really happens"? It is an affront to our intelligence to be asked to believe this. I know that Buchanan is as aware as the experts concerned that there are "loopholes" in every single experiment that has ever been supposed to demonstrate it. A thousand experiments with loopholes amount to precisely nothing, in scientific terms.

It is not just a vague possibility I am talking about. There are real, common sense, totally comprehensible, explanations to these experiments that have never been investigated properly. I have studied them for the past five years.

So could you please tell your readers that they do not need to "endanger [their] instinct for self-preservation" by trying to come to terms with this kind of "utter nonsense" (to quote Oppenheimer again). Please tell them that they can find analyses of those loopholes and many other straightforward discussions, accessible to all, at http://www.aber.ac.uk/~cat.

The research described there was, incidentally, inspired by an article in the New Scientist back in 1992 or so, when a book review dared to mention the possibility of realist explanations, and did not damn them as the product naive wishful thinking!

Caroline H Thompson