ABSENCE OF CORRELATION BETWEEN THE SOLAR-NEUTRINO FLUX AND THE SUNSPOT NUMBER

There exists a considerable amount of research claiming a puzzling ant icorrelation between the neutrino detection rate at the Homestake expe riment and indicators of solar activity such as the sunspot number, gi ving rise to explanations involving the hypothesis of a neutrino magne tic moment. It is argued here that the claimed significant anticorrela tion is due to a statistical fallacy. A proper test based on certain o ptimality criteria fails to detect a significant time variation of the neutrino Bur in concert with the sunspot number, providing evidence t hat the observations are consistent with no correlation between the tw o series.