  We argue that certain apparently consistent low-energy effective field
theories described by local, Lorentz-invariant Lagrangians, secretly exhibit
macroscopic non-locality and cannot be embedded in any UV theory whose S-matrix
satisfies canonical analyticity constraints. The obstruction involves the signs
of a set of leading irrelevant operators, which must be strictly positive to
ensure UV analyticity. An IR manifestation of this restriction is that the
"wrong" signs lead to superluminal fluctuations around non-trivial backgrounds,
making it impossible to define local, causal evolution, and implying a
surprising IR breakdown of the effective theory. Such effective theories can
not arise in quantum field theories or weakly coupled string theories, whose
S-matrices satisfy the usual analyticity properties. This conclusion applies to
the DGP brane-world model modifying gravity in the IR, giving a simple
explanation for the difficulty of embedding this model into controlled stringy
backgrounds, and to models of electroweak symmetry breaking that predict
negative anomalous quartic couplings for the W and Z. Conversely, any
experimental support for the DGP model, or measured negative signs for
anomalous quartic gauge boson couplings at future accelerators, would
constitute direct evidence for the existence of superluminality and macroscopic
non-locality unlike anything previously seen in physics, and almost
incidentally falsify both local quantum field theory and perturbative string
theory.
