Potential dangers when phase shifts are used as a link between   experiment and QCD
  Luscher has shown that in single channel problem (elastic region below first inelastic threshold) there exists a direct link between the discrete value of the energy in a finite QCD volume and the scattering phase shift at the same energy. However, when the extension of the theorem is made to the baryon resonance sector (multi-channel situation in the inelastic region above first inelastic threshold), eigenphases (diagonal multi-channel quantities) replace phase shifts (single channel quantities). It is necessary to stress that the renowned pi/2 resonance criterion is formulated for eigenphases and not for phase shifts, so the resonance extracting procedure has to be applied with utmost care. The potential instability of extracting eigenphases from experimental data which occurs if insufficient number of channels is used can be reduced if a trace function which explicitly takes multi-channel aspect of the problem into account is used instead of single-channel phase shifts. 
Alfred Svarc
hep-ph nucl-th