Scope Validity in Medicine: An Asset to the Epidemiologist’s Armoury

Transportability of findings across research domains is challenging, with a substantial share of biomedical research not translating well to clinical medicine. This lack of transportability may improve by focus on ‘scope validity’: the extent to which an experimental target matches the intended application. Positioned amidst construct validity and external validity, more awareness and better articulation of the scope of preclinical investigations could support epistemic reasoning as well as knowledge utilisation in biomedical research. Scope validity necessitates a clear notion among researchers about their position within the broader field of study, a task that in an era of superspecialisation is as daunting as it is imperative.