Comment on ``The Dispersion Velocity of Galactic Dark Matter Particles''

In a recent Letter (astro-ph/9605001), Cowsik et al. claim that a self-consistent treatment of the dark Galactic halo requires that the local velocity dispersion of dark-matter particles be $600$ km~s$^{-1}$ or greater, more than a factor of two larger than the canonical value of 270 km~s$^{-1}$. If true, this would significantly affect rates and signatures for detection of baryonic and nonbaryonic dark matter. We believe that this work is incorrect, probably because not all the observational constraints were taken into account and because the models were forced to satisfy arbitrary constraints on the halo density.

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