  The phenomenological adjustment of the nuclear pairing strength is usually
performed with respect to the odd-even staggering of the binding energies. We
find that the results strongly depend on the way in which the ground states of
the odd nuclei are computed. A thorough calculation including all time-even and
time-odd polarisation effects induced by the odd nucleon produces about 30%
reduced odd-even staggering as compared to the standard spherical calculations
in the relativistic mean-field model. The pairing strength must be enhanced by
about 20% to compensate for that effect. The enhanced strength has dramatic
consequences for the predicted deformation properties of the underlying
mean-field models, possibly implying that new adjustments of their parameters
become necessary as well.
