We calculated the median as well as weighted mean central estimates for the neutron lifetime , from a subset of measurements compiled in the 2019 update of the Particle Data Group ( PDG ) .
We then reconstruct the error distributions for the residuals using three different central estimates and then check for consistency with a Gaussian distribution .
We find that although the error distributions using the weighted mean as well as median estimate are consistent with a Gaussian distribution , the Student ’ s t and Cauchy distribution provide a better fit .
This median statistic estimate of the neutron lifetime from these measurements is given by 881.5 \pm 0.47 seconds . This can be used as an alternate estimate of the neutron lifetime . We also note that the discrepancy between beam and bottle-based measurements using median statistics of the neutron lifetime persists with a significance between 4-8 \sigma , depending on which combination of measurements is used .