  It has been recently suggested that magnetically affected neutrino
oscillations inside a cooling protoneutron star, created in a supernova
explosion, could explain the large proper motion of pulsars. We investigate
whether this hypothesis is in agreement with the observed properties of pulsars
and find that present data disfavor the suggested mechanism. The relevance of
our results for other models proposed to understand the origin of pulsar
velocities is also discussed.
