On the Self-Consistency of Scale-Setting Methods

TL;DR

This paper evaluates different self-consistency criteria for scale-setting methods in theoretical physics, highlighting the shortcomings of the widely used Principle of Minimum Sensitivity (PMS).

Contribution

It introduces and analyzes self-consistency conditions, demonstrating that PMS fails to meet these criteria, thus questioning its reliability.

Findings

PMS does not satisfy the proposed self-consistency conditions.

Alternative scale-setting methods may be more consistent.

The analysis guides better choices for scale-setting in theoretical calculations.

Abstract

We discuss various self-consistency conditions for scale-setting methods. We show that the widely used Principle of Minimum Sensitivity (PMS) is disfavored since it does not satisfy these requirements.