Thirty years of primordial deuterium abundances: A provenance-aware statistical reanalysis
How to prepare an accurate paper press kit? Illustrated guide
arXiv: 2611.02289v1 · Summary page
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A cosmological consensus survives an audit of its sources
Primordial deuterium is a sensitive test of the early Universe, but published abundance values are not necessarily independent measurements. A provenance-aware reanalysis assembled 957 published values and traced observational entries back to their underlying absorption systems where possible. It found that 80.1 percent of observational entries reused individual or compilation values. Although the database identifies 52 distinct absorbers, a small group dominates their representation in the literature.
Crucially, the modern consensus abundance remains stable under alternative absorber-level treatments and after removing the most frequently represented systems. What becomes less secure is the precision one might infer by treating publication counts as independent evidence. The finding has relevance well beyond cosmology: an expanding literature can repeatedly transmit the same observations without adding equivalent amounts of new information.
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