Abstract
Present quantum electrodynamics (QED) contains many very important “elements of truth”, but also some clear “elements of nonsense”. Because of the divergences and ambiguities, there is general agreement that a rather deep modification of the theory is needed, but in some forty years of theoretical work, nobody has seen how to disentangle the truth from the nonsense. In such a situation, one needs more experimental evidence, but during that same forty years we have found no clues from the laboratory as to what specific features of QED might be modified. Even worse, in the absence of any alternative theory whose predictions differ from those of QED in known ways, we have no criterion telling us which experiments would be the relevant ones to try.
Supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Contract No. F44620-60-0121.
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Jaynes, E.T. (1973). Survey of the Present Status of Neoclassical Radiation Theory. In: Mandel, L., Wolf, E. (eds) Coherence and Quantum Optics. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-2034-0_5
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