  We investigate the origin of the high Faraday rotation measures (RMs) found
for polarized radio galaxies in clusters. The two most likely origins are,
magnetic fields local to the source, or magnetic fields located in the
foreground intra-cluster medium (ICM). The latter is identified as the null
hypothesis. Rudnick & Blundell (2003) have recently suggested that the presence
of magnetic fields local to the source may be revealed in correlations of the
position angles (PAs) of the source intrinsic linear polarization and the RMs.
We investigate the claim of Rudnick & Blundell to have found a relationship
between the intrinsic PA0 of the radio source PKS 1246-410 and its RM, by
testing the clustering strength of the PA0-RM scatter plot. We show that the
claimed relationship is an artifact of an improperly performed null-experiment.
We describe a gradient alignment statistic aimed at finding correlations
between PA0 and RM maps. This statistic does not require any null-experiment
since it gives a unique (zero) result in the case of uncorrelated maps. We
apply it to a number of extended radio sources in galaxy clusters (PKS
1246-410, Cygnus A, Hydra A, and 3C465). In no case is a significant
large-scale alignment of PA0 and RM maps detected. We find significant
small-scale co-alignment in all cases, but we are able to fully identify this
with map making artifacts through a suitable statistical test. We conclude that
there is presently no existing evidence for Faraday rotation local to radio
lobes. Given the existing independent pieces of evidence, we favor the null
hypothesis that the observed Faraday screens are produced by intracluster
magnetic fields.
