In chiral effective field theory the leading order (LO) nucleon-nucleon potential includes two contact terms, in the two spin channels S = 0,1, and the one-pion-exchange potential. When the pion degrees of freedom are integrated out, as in the pionless effective field theory, the LO potential includes two contact terms only. In the three-nucleon system, the pionless theory includes a three-nucleon contact term interaction at LO whereas the chiral effective theory does not. Accordingly arbitrary differences could be observed in the LO description of three- and four-nucleon binding energies. We analyze the two theories at LO and conclude that a three-nucleon contact term is necessary at this order in both theories. In turn this implies that subleading three-nucleon contact terms should be promoted to lower orders. Furthermore, this analysis shows that one single low-energy constant might be sufficient to explain the large values of the singlet and triplet scattering lengths.
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