In the summer of 2017, the National Quality Forum (NQF) announced the formation of a Scientific Methods Panel (hereafter referred to as “the Panel”) as part of a redesign of its endorsement process. NQF created the Panel in response to stakeholder request during a Kaizen improvement event held in May 2017. Given the Panel’s role in the endorsement of performance measures used in national payment programs, the objective of this article is to describe the work of the Panel, and to describe its function in the larger context of the NQF measure endorsement process and in the measurement enterprise writ large. This article also serves as an introduction to a series of planned white papers being authored by the panel on specific technical issues in the area of health care performance measurement.