agrees remarkably well with energy-level fluctuations predicted by RMT for the GOE. Given the greater sensitivity of widths over energies to the degree of chaos in the system [9], and to effects related to the ”openess” of the system [27–29, 34, 35], perhaps this dichotomy can be resolved. However, I am not aware of any published model which does so while at the same time yielding ν > 1. 

For example, in the calculations of Ref. [9], collective effects sometimes resulted in regions of model space where transition-strength distributions deviated strongly from the PTD but, at the same time, energy-level fluctuations were consistent with GOE predictions. How- ever, transition-strength distributions in this model deviated from the PTD in the direction opposite ( ν < 1) of the NDE. 

Reaction effects also should be considered to explain the dichotomy. For example, it recently was proposed [35] that the standard transformation of measured to reduced s - wave neutron widths, Γ 0 n = Γ$_{n}$ $_{/}$√$_{E}$$_{, should be modified for nuclides near the peaks of}$ the s -wave neutron strength function. This newly proposed transformation, Γ 0 n = Γ$_{n}$ $_{/}$√$_{E}$ × π ( h 2 2 $_{m}$) 1 / $^{2}$( E + | E$_{0}$ | ), where E$_{0}$ is the energy (relative to threshold) of the s -wave single-particle state responsible for the peak in the neutron strength function, could affect (relative to the standard transformation) the shape of the Γ 0 n distribution for values of E$_{0}$ near the resolved- resonance energy range. However, as most of the NDE nuclides are not near the peaks of the s -wave neutron strength function, this proposal should not affect the NDE, and therefore cannot explain the dichotomy. 

Several explanations related to the ”openess” of the system [27, 28, 34] and to correla- tions between incoming and outgoing channels [29] have been proposed for the observation [23] that Γ 0 n distributions for 192 , $^{194}$Pt resonances are significantly broader ( ν ≈ 0 . 5) than the PTD. However, width distributions [28, 29] predicted by these theories are better char- acterized by ν < 1 rather than ν > 1 as observed for the NDE. 

Considering how data in the NDE were selected suggests another solution. It often has been stated that Δ$_{3}$ is very sensitive to missing or misassigned resonances (see e.g., [36– 38] for recent work on this subject). Therefore, if the NDE was pure but incomplete, or vice versa, it would not be expected to agree well with the spacing statistics used in Refs. [1, 2]. However, it seems plausible that because the NDE is both impure and incomplete, it can be made to agree with these statistics, especially considering that there are expected to be many more p - than s -wave resonances at the small widths where it was not possible 

