Tennekes [J. Fluid Mech.67, 561 (1975)] estimated the time decorrelation of inertial‐range excitation in isotropic turbulence by assuming effective statistical independence of the one‐time distributions of inertial‐range and energy‐range excitation. This picture has been challenged by Yakhot, Orszag, and She [Phys. Fluids A1, 184 (1989)], who studied forced turbulence by renormalization‐group (RNG) methods. The analysis given in the present paper leads to the conclusion that (a) precise coherence between energy‐range and inertial‐range excitation is needed to inhibit sweeping effects; (b) in the case of randomly forced turbulence, this coherence is impossible and Tennekes’ picture is unavoidable; and (c) the RNG analysis does not demonstrate inhibition of sweeping; instead, it discards sweeping effects at the outset. To augment the present study, an advected passive scalar is examined by computer simulation. Sweeping effects on small scales survive even in the case of long‐time advection by a frozen velocity field. The observed probability distributions resemble those for the alignment of vorticity and velocity observed in flow simulations.