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Physics News Update
Number 346 (Story #1), November 13, 1997 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein

NO CORRELATION EXISTS BETWEEN SOLAR NEUTRINOS AND SUNSPOTS, says Gunther Walther, a mathematician at Stanford. Neutrinos provide the only direct link between the sun's core and the Earth's surface, so physicists are eager to extract maximum information from their meager neutrino inventory, especially from the long-running detector in South Dakota. Walther (415-723-3066, walther@stat.stanford.edu) argues that studies which perceive an anti-correlation (sunspots go up when neutrino flux go down and vice versa) in this data are using statistical tests that are not really applicable to solar neutrino observations which are gathered over time, and that claims of correlation in this case are erroneous. Moreover, Walther feels that the dangers in using standard statistical tests for such time-series measurements are not properly treated by statistics textbooks and that therefore this problem has generally gone unrecognized in many parts of scientific work. (Upcoming article in Physical Review Letters, tent. 24 November 1997.)