  The inclusive spectra of charged particles measured at high transverse
momenta ($p_T\gtrsim$2GeV/c) in proton-proton and proton-antiproton collisions
in the range of center-of-mass energies $\sqrt{s}=200-7000$GeV are compared
with next-to-leading order perturbative QCD calculations using seven recent
sets of parton-to-hadron fragmentation functions (FFs). Accounting for the
uncertainties in the scale choices and in the parton distribution functions, we
find that most of the theoretical predictions tend to overpredict the measured
LHC and Tevatron cross sections by up to a factor of two. We identify the
currently too-hard gluon-to-hadron FFs as the probable source of the problem,
and justify the need to refit the FFs using the available LHC and Tevatron data
in a region of transverse momenta, $p_T\gtrsim$10GeV/c, which is supposedly
free from additional non-perturbative contributions and where the scale
uncertainty is only modest.
