Comment on "Accumulating Evidence for the Associate Production of a Neutral Scalar with Mass around 151 GeV"

Abstract

A recent paper [2109.02650] accumulates evidence for a new fundamental particle by combining several CMS and ATLAS searches for the Standard Model Higgs boson. The putative particle is a neutral scalar, $S$, with a mass of about 151 GeV. The reported significances are $5.1\sigma$ local and $4.8\sigma$ global. This nearly reaches the $5\sigma$ threshold for a discovery in high-energy physics. In this brief note we cast doubt on the strength of the evidence for a new particle. After taking into account the fact that signals were fitted to six different channels, we find that the significances are only $4.1\sigma$ local and $3.5\sigma$ global. The code and instructions for reproducing our calculations are available at https://github.com/andrewfowlie/accumulating_evidence.

Comments: 2 pages + refs, 1 figure. added further discussion of LEE. closely matches version accepted for publication in Phys.Lett.B