The radial flux of 10 keV neutrals from the Asdex-Upgradetokamak has been interpreted as a diagnostic of the radial electricfield Er near the plasma edge (Herrmann W and Asdex-Upgrade Team1995 Phys. Rev. Lett.75 4401),with the conclusion that Er changes gradually at a transition from theL-mode confinement regime to the H-mode regime. In contrast to theAsdex-Upgrade results, a similar installationon the DIII-D tokamak finds no measurable signalin H-mode plasmas with deep Er wells. Measurable signals only occurin plasmas with relatively large pitch-angle scattering rates at theplasma edge (or withanomalous beam-ion confinement). Large scattering rates require a largeelectron temperature and are invariably accompanied by deepripple wells. The results suggest an alternative explanation for thegradual evolution of the neutral-particle signal from Asdex-Upgrade: as the H-modepedestal develops, more beam ions are pitch-angle scattered into thephase space measured by the detector.