  J.S. Bell believed that his famous theorem entailed a deep and troubling
conflict between the empirically verified predictions of quantum theory and the
notion of local causality that is motivated by relativity theory. Yet many
physicists continue to accept, usually on the reports of textbook writers and
other commentators, that Bell's own view was wrong, and that, in fact, the
theorem only brings out a conflict with determinism or the hidden-variables
program or realism or some other such principle that (unlike local causality),
allegedly, nobody should have believed anyway. (Moreover, typically such
beliefs arise without the person in question even being aware that the view
they are accepting differs so radically from Bell's own.) Here we try to shed
some light on the situation by focusing on the concept of local causality that
is the heart of Bell's theorem, and, in particular, by contrasting Bell's own
understanding with the analysis of Jon Jarrett which has been the most
influential source, in recent decades, for the kinds of claims mentioned
previously. We point out a crucial difference between Jarrett's and Bell's own
understanding of Bell's formulation of local causality, which turns out to be
the basis for the erroneous claim, made by Jarrett and many others, that Bell
misunderstood the implications of his own theorem.
