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| image = Caroline H Thompson 358.jpg
| image = Caroline H Thompson 358.jpg
| alt = Caroline H. Thompson
| alt = Caroline H. Thompson
| birth_date = {{birth date|1943|00|00|mf=y}}
| birth_date = 1943
| death_date = {{birth date|2006|02|08|mf=y}}
| birth_place = England
| fields = [[Computer Scientist]]
| death_date = {{death date and age|2006|2|8|1943}}
| residence = Aberaeron, United Kingdom
| residence = Aberaeron, Wales, United Kingdom
| nationality = English
| nationality = English
| known_for = [[EPR]], [[Bell's Inequality]]
| fields = [[Computer Scientist|Computer science]], foundations of physics
| known_for = Critique of [[EPR]] and [[Bell's Inequality|Bell-test]] experiments, the "chaotic ball" model, the detection loophole
}}
}}
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">I was born in England in 1943.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I was quiet and studious as a child, and remained so until I entered an area of controversial physics, at age 50.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I remain studious, but am not by any means so quiet!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I have acquired a mission, to tell the world the hard facts about the ?EPR? experiments that are being reported as showing that the world we live in obeys weird quantum laws: ?entangled? particles are supposed to be able to influence each other instantaneously however far apart they are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The experiments have been misinterpreted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The theory is crazy, but there is no sign that the universe is.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"> </span>
'''Caroline H. Thompson''' (1943 – 8 February 2006) was an English computer scientist and researcher in the foundations of physics. She is known for her critical re-examination of [[EPR]] (Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen) and [[Bell's Inequality|Bell-test]] experiments, in which she argued that the reported violations of Bell inequalities do not in fact demonstrate quantum non-locality or "entanglement". To illustrate her position she devised an intuitive analogy known as the "chaotic ball" model and drew attention to what she termed the "detection loophole" in such experiments. Her arguments, which defended a [[local realism|local realist]] interpretation of quantum phenomena, fall outside the scientific mainstream.
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">To return to my story, the 1939-45 war meant the our family at first had no permanent home, with my father, an air-line pilot, moving from one RAF base to another and then, for a year or more, out to Baghdad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We lived in Cairo for some time, and my elder sister and I were sent to a French-speaking school.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I do not remember having managed to learn any French (later I did learn some, enabling me to read Alain Aspect?s PhD thesis, a landmark in my self-appointed challenge).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I became exceedingly introverted, too shy to ask questions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I learned to work things out for myself.</span>
==Biography==
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">Back in England, I had a very conventional education, always gaining high grades at school, loved by the teachers, musical, a nature lover, but with few friends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I won a scholarship to Cambridge to read mathematics, but here was not so successful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I could no longer score 90% in tests!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I was up against boys for the first time in my life, and they had been taught more than me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Still, I persevered and later (much later, in 1992 or so) discovered that my Director of Studies had thought highly of me, saying that she considered me capable of original thought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I gained a 2-1, and enough of an introduction to the ideas of mathematical physics to know that there was something odd going on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Neither relativity nor quantum theory seemed reasonable.</span>
===Early life and education===
Thompson was born in England in 1943, the daughter of an airline pilot. Because of the Second World War the family had no permanent home in her early years, moving between RAF bases and living for a time in Baghdad and in Cairo, where she and her elder sister attended a French-speaking school. Back in England she received a conventional education and won a scholarship to the University of Cambridge to read mathematics, graduating with a 2:1. She later described her Cambridge studies as her first exposure to mathematical physics, noting that neither relativity nor quantum theory seemed reasonable to her.
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">I shall pass swiftly over my uninspiring career.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I tried teaching, then I worked as a ?systems analyst?, producing a simulation program of the air traffic control system around Hong Kong airport.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Then I decided to aim for a job in the country, and went to Reading University to gain the qualifications (an MSc in Biometry) for a post as statistician at East Malling Research Station, where they do research on horticultural crops.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I learned their version of ?experimental method?, in which human bias was kept under strict control: the statisticians laid down the rules, aiming to ensure that the published results were valid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The local fruit-growers relied on them in their commercial decisions.</span>
===Career===
Thompson worked at various times as a teacher and as a systems analyst, producing a simulation program for the air traffic control system around Hong Kong airport. She obtained an MSc in Biometry from the University of Reading and took a post as a statistician at East Malling Research Station, which carries out research on horticultural crops. There she worked within a strict statistical approach to experimental method intended to keep human bias under control.
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">Marriage, at age 32, marked the end of my academic career.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I had two children, then moved to Wales, where my father had retired to a small farm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>My husband is not academic, and reckons to be able to turn his hand to most things, but Wales proved a difficult place to find employment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We are not Welsh, and have not learned the language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We tried running a small transport business, but this was a failure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>In 1990 we lost our home and had to move into rented accommodation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We were very lucky in this ? we are still here, in a very pleasant house with a garden of which we are quite proud.</span>
She married at the age of 32 and had two children, Daniel and Chloe, before moving to Wales, where her father had retired to a small farm. After a period out of academic work she took a training course in information technology and then studied for an MSc in Computer Science at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, where her supervisor was Horst Holstein. It was during this period, around 1993, that she encountered accounts of the EPR experiments and began the study of the foundations of physics that occupied the rest of her life. The head of computer science at Aberystwyth, Frank Bott, supported her continued use of the university's library and computing facilities.
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">I took a training course in Information Technology and enjoyed it, then went to University of Wales, Aberystwyth, to do an MSc in Computer Science.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I enjoyed this, too, but it showed no sign of leading to a job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I did not fit in, did not speak Welsh.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>My supervisor, Horst Holstein, had some books on physics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He lent me Hendrik Lorentz? ?Problems of Modern Physics?, published 1927.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I immersed myself in a world that was partly the ?neural nets? of my MSc project and partly the world of fundamental physics ?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>not the mathematical version of it this time, though, but the intuitive one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I wanted to understand what magnetism really was, what light really was, how the aether worked<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>? I was sure Lorentz was right and there ''was'' an aether, but I doubted whether it was the absolute, static, one that he had in mind.</span>
Thompson lived in Aberaeron, Wales. She died on 8 February 2006, having fought cancer for several years, and was survived by her husband John and their two children.
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">Round about this time, I came across a reference I?d been looking for.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>About a year earlier I had heard for the first time of the EPR experiments that were supposed to demonstrate quantum action-at-a-distance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I had been amazed, as I had vaguely assumed that quantum theory would have died out by now as it seemed so blatantly inadequate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>To me, a statistical theory cannot make sense without a more detailed one existing, in principle at least, to describe the entities that are being analysed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I knew in my bones that I would be able to find a more rational explanation for whatever it was those experiments had produced.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Anyway, towards the end of 1993 I came across in a New Scientist newsletter a reference to Alain Aspect?s papers in Physical Review Letters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>My ticket for Aberystwyth University Library had just lapsed, but there was nothing to stop me going and looking at the papers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I read one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I could ''almost'' understand it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I knew that this was within my grasp, as this was clearly not the incontrovertible evidence that one would reasonably have hoped for!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>How on earth had it happened that the world had been asked to accept ?nonlocality? on such flimsy evidence?</span>
==Scientific contributions==
Thompson devoted the latter part of her life to arguing that the experiments commonly cited as demonstrating quantum "entanglement" and action at a distance had been misinterpreted. She held that a purely statistical theory such as quantum mechanics could not be complete without an underlying, more detailed description of the entities being analysed, and she sought [[local realism|local realist]] explanations for the observed correlations.
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">From this point on there was no turning back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I have devoted my life to finding out how the various ?quantum entanglement? experiments worked and to trying to publicise my findings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>As soon as I had worked out my first idea (I had rediscovered the ?detection loophole? after just a few days of thought) I wrote a short report on it, took it to my own head of section and to the Physics Department, and asked if I could please continue to use the library and the University computer so as to continue my investigations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The Physics Department were noncommittal, but the Computer Science head, Frank Bott, supported me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He is still doing so.</span>
A central element of her argument was the "detection loophole": the observation that when detector efficiencies fall below a certain critical value, the sub-sample of particle pairs that is actually detected need not be representative of the full ensemble, so that a local realist model can reproduce an apparent violation of a Bell inequality. To make this idea accessible to non-specialists she introduced the "chaotic ball" model, an intuitive analogy showing how selection effects and other experimental artifacts could account for the results without invoking non-locality. She also criticised the treatment of timing and "accidental" coincidences in EPR experiments, and questioned the interpretation of landmark experiments such as those of Alain Aspect.
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">For the next few months I studied the experiments, following the chains of references, sometimes breaking off to find out the relevant physics from text books.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was very exciting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It did not take long to understand the experiments (other ?realists? had been there before me), but the challenge was to understand the community!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What had gone wrong?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>How could they fail to see what I could see?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>How could they ignore the realist papers?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I wrote up my own simple explanation, using analogy and minimal mathematics so that I did not see how any reader could fail to understand it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I started trying to tell the world.</span>
Thompson met and corresponded with a number of researchers who shared realist views, including Trevor Marshall, Emilio Santos, Franco Selleri and Euan Squires. She presented her work at seminars and conferences, including at the University of Bari in Italy and at Durham, and circulated her papers through the arXiv (Los Alamos) preprint archive. While some of her papers appeared in edited volumes and in ''Foundations of Physics Letters'', her submissions to mainstream journals such as ''Physical Review Letters'' and ''Physical Review A'' were not accepted, and her local realist position remained outside the physics mainstream.
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">My first opportunity was Roger Penrose, who had the misfortune to be presenting a set of three public lectures in Aberystwyth, March 1994.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I took my papers round to his hotel, then arranged to meet him in the Physics Department lounge for coffee.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Poor man, he had expected a quiet little holiday, and instead had to listen to a madwoman!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I had, unfortunately, just had a ?revelation? about the nature of gravity, and poured all this out instead of concentrating on the solid facts of those experiments of Alain Aspect?s!</span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">He escaped, and did not reply to my letters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I looked elsewhere, to the people who had written the papers and books I was now reading, and wrote to a few of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Quite a number of them thought my first paper was good, and I began to meet people, starting with a trip to Manchester to see Trevor Marshall, who had written an important paper with Emilio Santos and Franco Selleri in 1983.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>A few months later I gave my first talk, a seminar at the University of Bari, Italy, invited there by my good friend Selleri.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>That same summer (1995) I visited Santos in Santander, and in the autumn spoke at a conference in Durham, at the invitation of another good friend, Euan Squires, sadly now deceased.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I have now given similar talks on about 6 occasions, but mostly I communicate with the world through internet discussions and by putting papers in the Los Alamos quantum physics archive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I have papers published in several books and one in Foundations of Physics Letters, but my attempts at storming the establishment journals ? Physical Review Letters and Physical Review A ? have met with failure.</span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">Not outright failure, though!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>There has been interesting correspondence ? see my [http://freespace.virgin.net/ch.thompson1/Tangled/tangled.html article in ?Accountability in Research?].</span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">It is recognised that I am right!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The attitude of the people in the field is epitomised by that of Abner Shimony, to whom I have recently gained an introduction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He made important contributions to the subject, co-authoring a paper on a modified Bell inequality in 1969 and a comprehensive report in 1978.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He is aware of the loopholes, and hence knows that the existing experiments ''can'' be explained by ?local realist? models, but he seems to believe that the quantum theory explanation is in fact the correct one and is expecting ''future'' experiments to be conclusive.</span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">Sorry, this was supposed to be about ''myself'' but my life and work are not separable!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I shall return briefly to that painful matter of earning a living.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>As I said, I do not fit in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I have not found employment as such, but a couple of years ago we inherited a little money and used it to buy a Franchise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>My husband now supplies sweets to about 150 shops scattered over the South-West corner of Wales, and I assist with the paperwork.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I intend to write books ? I feel compelled to ? but whether or not I can do this at a profit is an open question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The sweet business is not yet profitable, so we are still dependent on state benefits.</span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">Other biographical details: we have two boisterous dogs, two cats, a very tame Sun Conure (at present helping me on the keyboard!) and, outside, a whole aviary of other birds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>My father, now aged 86, has recently published the history of IFALPA, the airline pilots? association that he helped to create, and two days ago launched his autobiography.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>My mother celebrated the event by giving what she hopes will be her last party ? she is not as strong as she used to be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The children have now (almost) left home, having survived the deprivations of their early years remarkably well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>My daughter has started a career in a medical laboratory in Sheffield, while my son is doing a Computer Science degree at Brighton.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I wonder if some day he might join me in physics, re-establishing the notion of the aether, challenging the very ?facts? of physics!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We think we know the law of gravity, we think we know roughly how much the planets weigh, we think we know what the sun is made of, how it produces its energy, but do we?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Do we yet know ''anything''?</span>
* 2000 - "[[What Really Happens in Those Bell Correlation Experiments?]]"
* 2000 - "[[What Really Happens in Those Bell Correlation Experiments?]]"
* 1997 - "[[Behind the Scenes at the EPR Magic Show]]"
* 1997 - "[[Behind the Scenes at the EPR Magic Show]]"
* 1997 - "[[Timing, 'Accidentals' and Other Artifacts in EPR Experiments]]" ([http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/quant-ph/97011044 Read in full])
* 1997 - "[[Timing, 'Accidentals' and Other Artifacts in EPR Experiments]]" ([http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/quant-ph/97011044 Read in full])
* 1996 - "[[The Chaotic Ball: An Intuitive Analogy for EPR [Einstein-
* 1996 - "[[The Chaotic Ball: An Intuitive Analogy for EPR [Einstein-
Podolsky-Rosen] Experiments]]"
Podolsky-Rosen] Experiments]]"
==External links==
* [http://freespace.virgin.net/ch.thompson1/Tangled/tangled.html "Subtraction of 'accidentals' and the validity of Bell tests" and related article in ''Accountability in Research'']
* [http://lanl.arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+AND+caroline+thompson/0/1/0/all/0/1 Papers by Caroline Thompson at arXiv]
* [https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9611037 "The Chaotic Ball: An Intuitive Analogy for EPR Experiments" (arXiv)]
* [https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0210150 "The 'Chaotic Ball' model, local realism and the Bell test loopholes" (arXiv, with Horst Holstein)]
[[Category:Scientist]]
[[Category:Scientist|Thompson Caroline]]
[[Category:Worldwide List of Dissident Scientists]]
Latest revision as of 16:20, 20 July 2026
Caroline H. Thompson
Born
1943
England
Died
February 8, 2006(2006-02-08) (aged 62–63)
Residence
Aberaeron, Wales, United Kingdom
Nationality
English
Known for
Critique of EPR and Bell-test experiments, the "chaotic ball" model, the detection loophole
Caroline H. Thompson (1943 – 8 February 2006) was an English computer scientist and researcher in the foundations of physics. She is known for her critical re-examination of EPR (Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen) and Bell-test experiments, in which she argued that the reported violations of Bell inequalities do not in fact demonstrate quantum non-locality or "entanglement". To illustrate her position she devised an intuitive analogy known as the "chaotic ball" model and drew attention to what she termed the "detection loophole" in such experiments. Her arguments, which defended a local realist interpretation of quantum phenomena, fall outside the scientific mainstream.
Biography
Early life and education
Thompson was born in England in 1943, the daughter of an airline pilot. Because of the Second World War the family had no permanent home in her early years, moving between RAF bases and living for a time in Baghdad and in Cairo, where she and her elder sister attended a French-speaking school. Back in England she received a conventional education and won a scholarship to the University of Cambridge to read mathematics, graduating with a 2:1. She later described her Cambridge studies as her first exposure to mathematical physics, noting that neither relativity nor quantum theory seemed reasonable to her.
Career
Thompson worked at various times as a teacher and as a systems analyst, producing a simulation program for the air traffic control system around Hong Kong airport. She obtained an MSc in Biometry from the University of Reading and took a post as a statistician at East Malling Research Station, which carries out research on horticultural crops. There she worked within a strict statistical approach to experimental method intended to keep human bias under control.
She married at the age of 32 and had two children, Daniel and Chloe, before moving to Wales, where her father had retired to a small farm. After a period out of academic work she took a training course in information technology and then studied for an MSc in Computer Science at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, where her supervisor was Horst Holstein. It was during this period, around 1993, that she encountered accounts of the EPR experiments and began the study of the foundations of physics that occupied the rest of her life. The head of computer science at Aberystwyth, Frank Bott, supported her continued use of the university's library and computing facilities.
Thompson lived in Aberaeron, Wales. She died on 8 February 2006, having fought cancer for several years, and was survived by her husband John and their two children.
Scientific contributions
Thompson devoted the latter part of her life to arguing that the experiments commonly cited as demonstrating quantum "entanglement" and action at a distance had been misinterpreted. She held that a purely statistical theory such as quantum mechanics could not be complete without an underlying, more detailed description of the entities being analysed, and she sought local realist explanations for the observed correlations.
A central element of her argument was the "detection loophole": the observation that when detector efficiencies fall below a certain critical value, the sub-sample of particle pairs that is actually detected need not be representative of the full ensemble, so that a local realist model can reproduce an apparent violation of a Bell inequality. To make this idea accessible to non-specialists she introduced the "chaotic ball" model, an intuitive analogy showing how selection effects and other experimental artifacts could account for the results without invoking non-locality. She also criticised the treatment of timing and "accidental" coincidences in EPR experiments, and questioned the interpretation of landmark experiments such as those of Alain Aspect.
Thompson met and corresponded with a number of researchers who shared realist views, including Trevor Marshall, Emilio Santos, Franco Selleri and Euan Squires. She presented her work at seminars and conferences, including at the University of Bari in Italy and at Durham, and circulated her papers through the arXiv (Los Alamos) preprint archive. While some of her papers appeared in edited volumes and in Foundations of Physics Letters, her submissions to mainstream journals such as Physical Review Letters and Physical Review A were not accepted, and her local realist position remained outside the physics mainstream.
