Advocacy capture of inference in policy-relevant health science: when moral commitments govern empirical claims

This preprint develops the concept of advocacy capture of inference in policy-relevant health science. Advocacy capture occurs when a field’s normative commitments begin to govern empirical reasoning while the resulting claims are still presented as evidence-based. The paper distinguishes legitimate advocacy from value-governed inference, defines four threshold conditions for capture, and identifies five recurring category errors: evidence becomes innocence, risk becomes blame, disparity becomes mechanism, stigma becomes explanation, and governance becomes evaluation. It also introduces TRACE as a practical protocol for checking claim type, evidentiary warrant, alternative mechanisms, claim-design fit and scope. Companion preprint: Asymmetric evidence in harm reduction: behavioural adaptation and net-effect evaluation. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20102016