BMI is bogus... because it embarrasses USA

It was making sense up to a point where an author claimed that 200 years ago most people led sedentiary life styles, although I had to ignore his quip on "if the formula does not describe the data, rig the formula" (this, of course, is what science - at least theoretical physics - is all about).

But when I got to the end, it was this: BMI does not make sense because...

"10. It embarrasses the U.S.

It is embarrassing for one of the most scientifically, technologically and medicinally advanced nations in the world to base advice on how to prevent one of the leading causes of poor health and premature death (obesity) on a 200-year-old numerical hack developed by a mathematician who was not even an expert in what little was known about the human body back then."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106268439&sc=fb&cc=fp

Come to think about it, an even more ridiculous fact is that our entire space program is based on a 300-year-old formula developed by a theologian!



This pearl of logical reasoning comes to you directly from a Stanford (!) Professor (!) of Mathematics (!) Keith Devlin...

http://www.stanford.edu/~kdevlin/

P.S. The author of this blog takes no position on the validity of BMI as a measure of human obesity, only on the validity of the referenced above argument against it.