  Most physicists uphold that the tests of the Bell inequalities (BI) performed
up to now confirm the predictions of standard quantum mechanics (SQM) and
refute local realism. But some scholars criticize this conviction, defending
local realism in various ways. We present here a new viewpoint based on an
improved version of the extended semantic realism (ESR) model that has been
recently worked out by one of the authors. The ESR model embodies the
mathematical formalism of SQM into a more general framework in which not only
local realism but also objectivity of physical properties holds, and the
probabilities of SQM are reinterpreted as conditional instead of absolute.
Hence the ESR model provides some predictions that are formally identical to
those of SQM but have a different physical interpretation, and further
predictions that differ also formally from those of SQM. In particular, we show
here that the BI introduced by Clauser, Horne, Shimony and Holt (BCHSH
inequalities) must be replaced by modified BCHSH inequalities. These depend on
detection probabilities which may be such that the new inequalities are never
violated by the conditional expectation values predicted by the model. The
condition that no violation occurs implies the existence of upper bounds on
detection probabilities, which makes the ESR model falsifiable. These results
admit an intuitive explanation in terms of unfair sampling but basically differ
from the seemingly similar results obtained by other approaches in which the
efficiency problem is discussed in order to vindicate some kind of local
realism.
