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author:
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    Institute for Nuclear Studies, Department of Physics, George Washington University, Washington DC 20052, USA; E-mail:
title: Assessing Theory Uncertainties in EFT Power Countings from Residual Cutoff Dependence
---

Motivation: Serious Theorists Have Error Bars
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That our understanding of natural phenomena is based on concrete, falsifiable predictions is deeply ingrained in the scientific method. It is insufficient to compare numbers; one also must judge their reliability. And since we do not trust experiments without error bars, why should it be acceptable for a theorist to not assess uncertainties in a calculation independently of the data to be explained? Simply stating that this is “difficult” is certainly no sufficient excuse, especially after the recent surge of articles on theory errors; see e.g. [@editorial; @JPhysG]. The prospect of a reproducible, objective, quantitative estimate of theoretical uncertainties lies thus at the heart not only of any Effective Field Theory (EFT). But EFTs claim to possess well-defined schemes to find just that. It is therefore befitting to explore how the validity of such prescriptions can be gauged.

More than a decade ago, Lepage used a highly influential lecture to quantify convergence to data [@Lepage:1997cs]. In contradistinction, the test presented 