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The distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) has long been of keyimportance for the distance ladder and the distances to all galaxies, and assuch many groups have provided measurements of its distance modulus (\mu) withmany methods and various means of calibrating each method. Before the year2001, the many measures spanned a wide range (roughly 18.1 < \mu < 18.8) withthe quoted error bars being substantially smaller than the spread, and hencethe consensus conclusion being that many of the measures had theiruncertainties being dominated by unrecognized systematic problems. In 2001, theHubble Space Telescope Key Project (HSTKP) on the distance scale made anextensive analysis of earlier results and adopted the reasonable conclusionthat the distance modulus is 18.50+-0.10 mag, and the community has generallyaccepted this widely popularized value. After 2002, 31 independent papers havereported new distance measures to the LMC, and these cluster tightly around\mu=18.50 mag. Indeed, these measures cluster too tightly around the HSTKPvalue, with 68% of the measures being within 0.5-sigma of 18.50 mag. AKolmogorov-Smirnov test proves that this concentration deviates from theexpected Gaussian distribution at a >3-sigma probability level. Thisconcentration is a symptom of a worrisome problem. Interpretations consideredinclude correlations between papers, widespread over-estimation of error bars,and band-wagon effects. This note is to alert workers in the field that this isa serious problem that should be addressed.

A Problem with the Clustering of Recent Measures of the Distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud