In this note we point out a bias error that affects calibrations of dBagnold-typeT energetics sediment transport models. Calibrations based on instantaneous measurements of fluid velocity and suspended sediment concentration incur an inherent increase in correlation between measured and predicted sediment transport rates because the measured fluid velocity resides on both sides of the calibration equation. Random, fully uncorrelated velocity and suspended load time series tests comparing the energetics model with a similar model which divides both sides of the equation by the velocity, showed that having velocity on both sides increased the R 2 correlation coefficient from its expected near zero value to 0.45. This bfalse correlationQ can be as high as 0.55 when there is a high mean concentration relative to the concentration variance and there are small mean velocities. In contrast, when there is relatively high variability in concentration in the presence of large mean velocities (e.g. suspension events of coarse grains under waves in the surf zone with an alongshore current), the bfalse correlationQ reduced to 0.35. Comparisons with data from two swash experiments and a surf zone study showed a similar increase in bfalse correlationQ. Associated with the bfalse correlationQ was a 4-fold overestimate of the calibration coefficient used to tune the sediment transport model under simulated noisy field measurement conditions.