Gravitational Anomaly Measurement in Wide Binaries is Sensitive to Orbital Modeling

Recent work by Chae et al. (2026) reported a gravitational anomaly in 36 wide-binary pairs, finding a gravity boost factor of γ ≡ G_eff/G_N ≈ 1.60 at low accelerations, consistent with predictions from Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND). We reanalyze the same dataset using a hierarchical Bayesian model that infers a global γ across all systems while fitting three-dimensional orbital elements. Our model yields γ = 1.12, consistent with Newtonian gravity (γ = 1) at the ~0.4σ level. To identify the source of the discrepancy, we perform a test using an approach similar to Chae et al. (2026), replacing the semi-major axis with a geometric de-projection of the observed projected separation. This test yields γ = 1.56, closely matching the result of Chae et al. (2026). This suggests that the inferred value of γ is sensitive to how the three-dimensional orbital separation is modeled, and including an independent semi-major axis parameter can account for velocity excesses that would otherwise be attributed to non-Newtonian gravity.