  Recent analyses of the distribution of reduced neutron widths in the Nuclear
Data Ensemble (NDE) and in the Pt isotopes find strong disagreement with
predictions of random-matrix theory. These analyses combine the
maximum-likelihood method with a cutoff on the reduced neutron widths. We show
that the method introduces a systematic error (the "cutoff error"). That error
(seemingly taken into account for the Pt data) increases with increasing cutoff
and decreasing number of data points. We reanalyse the NDE taking the cutoff
error into account. While differing in detail, our results confirm the earlier
conclusion that the NDE disagrees significantly from RMT predictions.
