  I give a status report on the validity of the so-called ``fourth-root
trick'', i.e. the procedure of representing the determinant for a single
fermion by the fourth root of the staggered fermion determinant. This has been
used by the MILC collaboration to create a large ensemble of lattices using
which many quantities of physical interest have been and are being calculated.
It is also used extensively in studies of QCD thermodynamics. The main question
is whether the theory so defined has the correct continuum limit. There has
been significant recent progress towards answering this question. After
recalling the issue, and putting it into a broader context of results from
statistical mechanics, I critically review the new work. I also address the
related issue of the impact of treating valence and sea quarks differently in
rooted simulations, discuss whether rooted simulations at finite temperature
and density are subject to additional concerns, and briefly update results for
quark masses using the MILC configurations. An answer to the question in the
title is proposed in the summary.
