  Contrary to a recent claim, the inferred primordial abundances of the light
elements are quite consistent with the expectations from standard big bang
nucleosynthesis when attention is restricted to direct observations rather than
results from chemical evolution models. The number of light neutrino (or
equivalent particle) species ($N_\nu$) can be as high as 4.53 if the
nucleon-to-photon ratio ($\eta$) is at its lower limit of $1.65 \times
10^{-10}$, as constrained by the upper bound on the deuterium abundance in high
redshift quasar absorption systems. Alternatively, with $N_\nu = 3$, $\eta$ can
be as high as $8.90 \times 10^{-10}$ if the deuterium abundance is bounded from
below by its interstellar value.
