A research program that redefines success conditions to exclude the very problem it faces commits the fallacy of definitional retreat, which is a structural form of question-begging identified by Hamblin in formal dialectic.

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Definitional retreat(as used in logic and argumentation): A logical trick where someone changes the definition of key terms to make their theory appear successful, even though it hasn't actually solved the original problem.
Formal dialectic(as an area of philosophical study): The study of how arguments work in dialogue, focusing on the logical rules and structures that make arguments fair and valid between two people debating.
Hamblin(a theorist who identified new types of logical errors missed by earlier classifications): Charles Hamblin, a 20th-century philosopher who showed that the traditional rules for evaluating arguments were incomplete and didn't account for how arguments actually work in real conversations.
Research program(as used in philosophy of science): A long-term scientific or philosophical project that uses a core set of ideas and methods to solve problems, kind of like a strategy that a scientist commits to over many years.

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