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In a regime where data are only mildly informative, prior choices can play asignificant role in Bayesian statistical inference, potentially affecting theinferred physics. We show this is indeed the case for some of the parametersinferred from current gravitational-wave measurements of binary black holecoalescences. We reanalyze the first detections performed by the twin LIGOinterferometers using alternative (and astrophysically motivated) priorassumptions. We find different prior distributions can introduce deviations inthe resulting posteriors that impact the physical interpretation of thesesystems. For instance, (i) limits on the $90\%$ credible interval on theeffective black hole spin $\chi_{\rm eff}$ are subject to variations of $\sim10\%$ if a prior with black hole spins mostly aligned to the binary's angularmomentum is considered instead of the standard choice of isotropic spindirections, and (ii) under priors motivated by the initial stellar massfunction, we infer tighter constraints on the black hole masses, and inparticular, we find no support for any of the inferred masses within theputative mass gap $M \lesssim 5 M_\odot$.

Impact of Bayesian prior on the characterization of binary black hole coalescences