Advocacy Trumps Accuracy in Health Data

A leading medical group publicly defended maintaining a misleading maternal‑mortality narrative after a coding change, arguing that correcting it would undermine advocacy gains. This shows elite actors sometimes privilege policy momentum over factual clarity, even when the underlying measurement is known to be flawed. — If institutions openly justify misleading the public to preserve reforms, it erodes trust and invites politicization across health, media, and policy domains.