Quantum Mysteries for No One?

Attached is our comment on the paper by Frank Lad, “Quantum Mysteries for No One” in Journal of Modern Physics (July 2021). Lad’s paper claims to refute Mermin’s result in, “Quantum Mysteries for Anyone” in Journal of Philosophy (1981). [Also published as, “Bringing home the atomic world: Quantum mysteries for anybody” in American Journal of Physics (1981).] While Lad may be trying to make a point concerning experimental tests of Bell’s inequality, we show that his attempt to relate his point to Mermin’s result is a complete non-starter. We next show how Lad’s analysis can be made relevant to Mermin’s paper, but in that case Lad’s analysis actually agrees with Mermin’s result. So, either Lad’s paper is a complete non-starter or it agrees with Mermin’s result. Either way, Lad has failed to refute Mermin’s result. Of course, this is not surprising since Mermin’s result follows from simple mathematical facts regarding textbook quantum mechanics and his well-defined instantiation of “local realism.” As such, it’s really beyond refute.

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