Model uncertainty and reference value of the Planck constant

• The choice of a Planck constant value from the measured values is investigated.
• Statistical parametric models explaining the data are proposed.
• The probability of each model to apply, given the data, is calculated.
• The model uncertainty is included in the error budget.
• The consistency of the values provided by the different experiments is investigated.

Statistical parametric models are proposed to explain the values of the Planck constant obtained by comparing electrical and mechanical powers and by counting atoms in 28Si28Si enriched crystals. They assume that uncertainty contributions – having heterogeneous, datum-specific, variances – might not be included in the error budgets of some of the measured values. Model selection and model averaging are used to investigate data consistency, to identify a reference value of the Planck constant, and to include the model uncertainty in the error budget.