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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

It does for some applications, and not for others. In epidemiology you're looking at the number across broad populations, where a lot of the "three dimensions" idiosyncrasies cancel out. You're likely to run into trouble taking literal BMI constants and turning them into individualized patient care instructions, though.

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Or basically: there are outliers, and those tend to complain. But the average billions cancel them out statistically.

I'm an outlier myself, and so is anyone who did some serious sports for a significant amount of time. There are other reasons to be an outlier too. But they're not so statistically significant.

ditto. Always a bit frustrating when the sadly overweight nurse looks at my height and weight, charts it, and mutters to themselves "borderline". My last visit, at least the doctor deigned to actually eyeball me and said "you look like you are quite active, we can ignore this".

Oh I'm inarguably overweight, but not to the point the BMI would indicate, considering that when i was younger and in top form i was between 29 and 30.

You are saying it is a not dreadful statistical measure.

That is doubtful, but possible

It is used for individuals. That is where it is harmful

> harmful

It's hard to conceive of anyone meaningfully "harmed" by being a BMI outlier.

The only real occassion it comes up is when some lean and uncommonly athletic person gets miscategorized as obese and get warned of increased risks to their wellness if they don't lose weight. A warning which they generally laugh at because they know their own situation.

That's hardly "harm" -- "mild social nuisance" is more apt.

> It's hard to conceive of anyone meaningfully "harmed" by being a BMI outlier.

"You are fat. You must diet."...."Oh my Dog!! I am fat!!! I will fast"

Potentially for health insurance but I get the actuarial argument, especially since higher than typical weight regardless of fat composition puts higher than typical strain on your cardiovascular (and other) systems

The harm is that are more likely to get prescribed unnecessary medications. Most people are not confident enough or not knowledgeable enough to wave off what doctors say.

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