What's in the World?

One of the major benefits of being editor of the American Journal of Physics (AJP) is the first hand experience with scientific debate where authors and reviewers argue about issues in ways that frequently never appear in public. Although I cannot reveal these confidential exchanges, I will discuss a recent series of Letters to the Editor of AJP, which provides some insight into the nature of these debates. The Letters involve the interpretations of quantum mechanics. To set the stage I will explain Bell's theorem, and at the end I will draw some general conclusions that go well beyond physics.