Comment on "Bayesian Analysis of Pentaquark Signals from CLAS Data", with Response to the Reply by Ireland and Protopopsecu

Abstract

The CLAS Collaboration has published an analysis using Bayesian model selection. My Comment criticizing their use of arbitrary prior probability density functions, and a Reply by D.G. Ireland and D. Protopopsecu, have now been published as well. This paper responds to the Reply and discusses the issues in more detail, with particular emphasis on the problems of priors in Bayesian model selection.

Section II is copied from Phys. Rev. Lett. 101 029101 (2008). In v2, my response to first italicized quote in Sec. III is changed