Comment on "Fragment distributions for highly charged systems"

An article by Williams et al. fails to find evidence for critical behavior in central collisions of 35-400 MeV/nucleon Kr-84+Au-197. On, this basis, a nd because of the effect of secondary decay on the fragment charge distribu tion, these authors question the validity of the critical exponents obtaine d by the EOS Collaboration for 1 GeV/nucleon Au+C. It is shown that the exp eriment by Williams et nl. was not optimized to search for critical behavio r and that the effect of secondary decay at the excitation energy correspon ding to the critical point in the Au + C system is small. [S0556-2813(98)04 612-3].