Sampling methods for stellar masses and the mmax-Mecl relation in the starburst dwarf galaxy NGC 4214

It has been claimed in the recent literature that a non-trivial relation between the mass of the most-massive star, m(max), in a star cluster and its embedded star cluster mass (the m(max) - M-ecl relation) is falsified by observations of the most-massive stars and the H alpha luminosity of young star clusters in the starburst dwarf galaxy NGC 4214. Here, it is shown by comparing the NGC 4214 results with observations from the Milky Way that NGC 4214 agrees very well with the predictions of the m(max) - M-ecl relation and with the integrated galactic stellar initial mass function theory. The difference in conclusions is based on a high degree of degeneracy between expectations from random sampling and those from the m(max) - M-ecl relation, but are also due to interpreting m(max) as a truncation mass in a randomly sampled initial mass function. Additional analysis of galaxies with lower SFRs than those currently presented in the literature will be required to break this degeneracy.