[Clascomment] Comment on 'Comment on the narrow baryon peak reported by Amaryan et al.' by Volker Burkert et al.

[Hicks, Kenneth]

Dear Mikhail,

You have discovered for yourself the main point of our paper.  Since the 
background shape is not well known, there are various ways to draw the 
background.  Since the statistical significance depends on the background 
shape, and also on the cuts applied, then I believe the conclusions of our 
paper are well stated.  

The goal of the paper is simply to explain why the CLAS Collaboration did 
not agree to publish the Amaryan et al. paper as a CLAS publication. I think 
the paper accomplishes this goal.

Please see additional replies embedded after your comments below.

Best regards,
Ken

-----Original Message-----
From: Mikhail Osipenko [mailto:osipenko at ge.infn.it] 
Sent: Sunday, November 13, 2011 6:34 AM
To: clascomment at jlab.org
Cc: Hicks, Kenneth; burkert at jlab.org; osipenko at ge.infn.it
Subject: Comment on 'Comment on the narrow baryon peak reported by Amaryan et al.' by Volker Burkert et al.

Dear Authors of the 'Comment',

I read through the note and I had a general impression that it is not very well
written. Moreover, some observations are weak by themselves (just as the
Moskov's signal) and may trigger in a broader public opposite effect to that
expected. Let me point out these issues and then some text improvements below.

Best Regards,
                          Mikhail.
================================
General:

1. Entire discussion of 'Statistical Anomalies' is very weakly justified and
hardly an external reader can agree with it. For example I don't have the data
points from Moscov's plots and I have not been involved in the reviews, so I
have tried to verify the statements made by looking on the contested Moscov's
Figures 8(a) and 9. In Fig.8(a) indeed I read out 1331 counts in three
incriminated bins, but already here if I draw by-eye 'a smooth background' and
estimate number of counts above it I get 101 counts (not 71 claimed).
Furthermore, expecting in the same fashion Fig.9 I obtain 106 counts in the peak
above 'black dot-dashed line' MC background provided by Moskov et al.
I am probably totally wrong in my by-eye estimates, but most of reader have
exactly the same means I have and will come to exactly same conclusion: where is
the discrepancy?
--> I think your "by-eye" estimates are not very good.  If you like, I can 
send you the calculations showing that the numbers in our paper are correct.

Could you please remind me if this 'Anomaly' was found by one of the Working
Group Review Committees?
--> Please read the review committee's final report.  You will find extensive 
discussion if you just read this reference.

2. The message that few different Review Committees were appointed is missing. I
guess it is important to notice that there were different/independent reviewers
looking to this analysis, not just the same 'bad bureaucrats' waisting years.
--> I don't know how you missed this discussion in the paper.  It is clearly 
written in our paper that we had review committees and parallel analyses.

3. In conclusion a statement that CLAS Collaboration has rejected this analysis
because of serious concerns is necessary.
--> This is stated clearly in the abstract and also in the paper.

================================
Details:

--> I will communicate with you individually about these detailed suggestions.

page 1, p.1 - 'in the mass of the pK_L system, M(pK_L), at about 1.54 GeV' (no
mass repeated twice)

page 1 - 'missing mass ofF' is used, is it mistype or it is right way to write it?

page 1 - you say pi+ and pi- are detected, not clear if proton is also detected
or it is detected in some cases?

page 1, p.2 - 'reconstructed via momentum and energy conservation, M_X(K_L).' I
may try to hint what does it mean, but probably better to change wording like:
'assuming that the only unmeasured/missed particle in the event is K_L'.

page 2, p.1 - 'due to other kinematic restrictions' - you could explain better,
probably it is acceptance, right?

page 2, p.2 - definition of t_\Theta in terms of p_\gamma and p_K_S is
unnecessary, also because it would require to define these 4-momenta as well.
The text 'the momentum transfer SQUARED' is sufficient. If one interested will
find it in Ref.1.

page 2, p.4 - second part of the paragraph beginning with 'In the case of Ref.1,
the technical review...' is out of place or not necessary. This section is about
review procedure, not on the physics motivations which come in following
sections. At most has to be moved in paragraph 5 after: '...many years of effort
were spent examining this data analysis.' Also substitution of reviewers of the
Review Committees has to be mentioned here.

page 4, p.3 - need to stress that according to the theoretical motivations given
in Ref.1 the lower t-cut the better is the channel selection. One can argue that
there are many other factors, but practically this is the argument used for the
actual t-cut.

page 4, p5 - 'demonstrated in Refs 5 and 6, where the latter HAS remeasured...'

page 4., p.6 - mention of 'ODU group' here and on the beginning of the next page
seems to be unnecessary, 'authors of Ref.1' is more than enough.

page 5 - Conclusions - as a first sentence I would suggest something like: 'The
analysis of Ref.1 was rejected by the CLAS Collaboration internal review
because of serious concerns on the validity of its results.'

===================================================