Bell Correlations and Selection Bias

Selection artefacts are common in science. A method of selecting samples from a larger population may produce bias, in either direction. It may induce correlations between variables independent in the full population, or mask correlations between variables dependent in the full population. Here we propose a surprising application of these familiar ideas. We argue that they are relevant to puzzling correlations uncovered in quantum theory by John Stewart Bell (Bell 1964). In the light of Bell’s work and subsequent experiments it is widely believed that the quantum world is ‘nonlocal’, in apparent tension with relativity. Many hold that the only alternative is to abandon ‘realism’, the view that there is an objective world independent of measurement. We propose instead that Bell correlations are selection artefacts, in tension neither with relativity nor realism.