  We respond to some criticism questioning the validity of the current Standard
Model Higgs exclusion limits at the Tevatron, due to the significant dependence
of the dominant production cross section from gluon-gluon fusion on the choice
of parton distribution functions (PDFs) and the strong coupling (alpha_S). We
demonstrate the ability of the Tevatron jet data to discriminate between
different high-x gluon distributions, performing a detailed quantitative
comparison to show that fits not explicitly including these data fail to give a
good description. In this context we emphasise the importance of the consistent
treatment of luminosity uncertainties. We comment on the values of alpha_S
obtained from fitting deep-inelastic scattering data, particularly the
fixed-target NMC data, and we show that jet data are needed for stability. We
conclude that the Higgs cross-section uncertainties due to PDFs and alpha_S
currently used by the Tevatron and LHC experiments are not significantly
underestimated, contrary to some recent claims.

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology;High Energy Physics - Experiment