The Ginga rate of observing cyclotron lines

The Ginga Gamma‐ray burst detector has observed three gamma‐ray bursts with absorption lines yet BATSE has not reported any lines. If the lines are cyclotron lines then gamma‐ray bursts are almost certainly not at cosmological distances. Based on the Ginga data, we estimate the fraction of bursts that should contain lines if all bursts had lines like GB880205, GB870303, or GB890929 is consistent with roughly 35%. Using estimates of the steradian‐sec factors for Ginga and BATSE implies that BATSE should be seeing about 5.5 events with lines per year although that number is rather uncertain. The features Ginga detects are most certainly not statistical flukes yet it is not clear why Ginga has such strong lines and BATSE does not.