🚫 Conceptual Overreach

Definition: *Conceptual overreach* occurs when a study’s claims, interpretations, or conclusions exceed what the data or design can legitimately support. It often involves stretching limited findings to make broad, unjustified theoretical or clinical assertions.

• Drawing causal conclusions from correlational data
• Extrapolating results from narrow or artificial settings to general populations
• Using surrogate endpoints (e.g., flow velocity) to make clinical predictions without real-world validation
• Framing exploratory findings as definitive or guideline-changing
• Overstating the novelty or impact of minor observations

Conceptual overreach can:

• Mislead clinicians and policymakers
• Undermine scientific credibility
• Promote ineffective or unvalidated interventions
• Distort the direction of future research

• methodological weakness
• causal inference
• rhetorical inflation
• surrogate endpoint fallacy