Reply to K. Amos et al. (nucl-th/0401055)

Abstract

An expression for the spin-orbit interaction coupling between different levels, which was shown to be aberrant more than thirty years ago persists in the literature without clear indication of what is used. It leads to expressions quite simpler than they should be. After an attempt to warn the community of the nuclear physicists on this strange situation (nucl-th/0312038), the authors of the publication in which the "aberrant" interaction is described and used, try to justify their work (nucl-th/0401055), by a very strange "symmetrization" of something already symmetric. They claim also that their method allows to solve some problem related to the Pauli principle and give some references, among which a book which reports the solution of such problem almost forty years ago, with a very small effect. An examination of their own results shows that their optimism is not completely justified. Nevertheless, any user of ECIS, sensitive to their arguments, is requested to ask their opinion to these five coauthors before publishing.