That's an unusually disingenuous description of the absolutely normal design process which literally 98% of TTRPGs and other games use.
I tend to expect better from your arguments, honestly.
The reality is that 4E was designed the same basic way as every previous edition and the overwhelming majority of TTRPGs. Which is to say designers doing what they think is right, based on the fact that they are (presumably) talented and experienced people with skills and goals. 4Es design was clearly influenced by long term goals from WotC corporate, but so is 2024s, so that's actually a point of similarity (whereas 5E 2014 interestingly was seemingly devoid of many long term goals beyond "survive").
5E 2014 took an alternative path because it was an "apology edition", which is not a situation many TTRPGs have ever been in, and particularly the designers felt like they didn't know what the audience they were trying to win back wanted. Despite this they seem (I use this word intentionally - we don't know) to have overruled the audience on certain points and rushed in a certain amount of half-arsed and inconsistent design at the end.
It's interesting that 5E seems to have mostly continued with that, but I feel like there are at least elements of the cargo cult around how Crawford seems to regard surveys. I think they combine in a rather unfortunate way with his leanings towards extreme design conservatism. I actually suspect more daring designs would have been successful by his metrics (particularly for martials, monks and some others) but they simply were not presented. And his design conservatism definitely influences the conclusions he draws from data.