Title: On the existence of young embedded clusters at high Galactic latitude,
Abstract: Careful analyses of photometric and star count data available for the nine
putative young clusters identified by Camargo et al. (2015, 2016) at high
Galactic latitudes reveal that none of the groups contain early-type stars, and
most are not significant density enhancements above field level. 2MASS colours
for stars in the groups match those of unreddened late-type dwarfs and giants,
as expected for contamination by (mostly) thin disk objects. A simulation of
one such field using only typical high latitude foreground stars yields a
colour-magnitude diagram that is very similar to those constructed by Camargo
et al. (2015, 2016) as evidence for their young groups as well as the means of
deriving their reddenings and distances. Although some of the fields are
coincident with clusters of galaxies, one must conclude that there is no
evidence that the putative clusters are extremely young stellar groups.