this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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So it is a gross misunderstanding of the term, sad.
Feel free to explain instead of being condescending for no reason, then.
Like I said I’m willing to learn, but from wiki -
Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claims; reliance on confirmation bias rather than rigorous attempts at refutation; lack of openness to evaluation by other experts; absence of systematic practices when developing hypotheses; and continued adherence long after the pseudoscientific hypotheses have been experimentally discredited.
If you can tell me how the things I listed don’t fit into that definition, great. Please do so.
I mean, BMI was openly developed, is systematically calculated and described, has been open to evaluation by experts for decades, and has been part of hypothesis development for similar decades. It is, in fact that systematic study that revealed where its use as an estimator or predictor of health had been overstated.
When science falsifies a model, it does not retroactively make the model pseudoscience.
The ongoing adherence to it after being falsified, repeatedly through different studies, applies to BMI, which qualifies it as pseudoscience.
So you are correct, falsification does not make something pseudoscience, but that’s not relevant in this case.