A comment on the suspected solar neutrino-solar activity connection

Recently, it has been proposed that there exists a highly statistically significant (at 98% level of confidence) relationship between³⁷Ar production rate (viz., solar neutrinos) and the Ap geomagnetic index (viz., solar particles), based on the _X -square goodness-of-fit test and correlation analysis, for the interval 1970–1990. While a relationship between the two parameters, indeed, seems to be discernible, the strength of the relationship has been overstated. Instead of being significant at the afore-mentioned level of confidence, the relationship is found to be significant at only 95% level of confidence, based on Yates' modification to the _X -square test for 2 × 2 contingency tables. Likewise, while correlation analysis yields a value ofr = 0.2691, it is important to note that such a value suggests that only about 7% of the variance can be explained by the inferred correlation and that the remaining 93% of the variance must be attributed to other sources.