Methodological Drift: How Flawed Evidence Analysis Becomes Unsound Policy Infrastructure.

Authors

Meredithe McNamara, Arjee Javellana Restar, Amy Middleman, Angel M Foster, Kellan Baker

Published in

American journal of public health. Volume 116. Issue 12. Pages 1927-1936.

Abstract

We propose "methodological drift," a staged process in which evidence analyses depart from accepted scientific standards but retain the appearance of rigor, and a framework for detecting it in health policy. We developed a conceptual model of methodological drift inductively from recurring patterns across contemporary health policy cases, applying it to 3 cross-domain case studies: the 2025 Department of Health and Human Services "Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices," the Ethics and Public Policy Center's secondary data analysis of mifepristone safety, and the 2025 reconstitution of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. We then developed a structured detection checklist organized by the model's 4 stages: question specification, evidence appraisal, evidence interpretation, and policy translation. Our model and structured checklist offer clinicians, researchers, policymakers, and courts tools to identify methodological drift before it becomes embedded in binding policy. Further testing is needed to establish the framework's reliability and validity and distinguish drift from legitimate scientific disagreement. (Am J Public Health. 2026;116(12):1927-1936. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2026.308754).

PMID:
43019521
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 13 Nov 2026.

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