I agree with you: several formulas, 1.73 not adapted to our populatons (1.95 would be better). But then, what do you propose to compare data?

Dear Dr Gillain-Martin, thank you for your attention to this topic, that ,as I exposed, it is a real source of errors and misappreciations. I noticed  that you emphasized one on within the many errors, the distance between  the 1928 BSA and  the very probably most frequent today’s body surface. Taking into account that undoubtedly it is mandatory to normalize the data  undergoing a comparison, I proposed to use the height based on many reasons :  the height changes in time  only for few centimeters, and in any case the  actual height  is that reached  in adulthood  and height is the biologic variable more connected with our muscle mass and organs size and functions. The consistent paper  is available in Research gate : “Indexing on Body Height Meters the many physiologic functions indexed on Body Surface Area “ and if you are  interested  in this topic, I should be happy if you woud read it and to expose me your opinions and criticisms.  

The original assumption that metabolism is related to BSA was a first approximation advanced in 1839 1. That is, a long time ago. By 1947, Kleiber M. 2 showed that this is incorrect and that the 0.75 power (i.e., 3/4 power) of weight related to metabolism and that the 2/3 power, i.e., BSA, did not. Adolph EF 1949 3 showed that although creatinine clearance was  approximately the 0.69 power of weight, inuIin clearance was the 0.77 power. Ignoring this newer finding and without any presented evidence, Pinkel D. 1958 4 introduced BSA for pediatric chemotherapy dosimetry. As typically happens, this misinformation was propagated throughout the medical literature as if it meant something, and despite much evidence to the contrary. West et al. in 1999 5 showed the fractal mechanics that produce the 3/4 power of weight proportion to metabolic rate referred to as Kleiber's law. In 2006, we 6 confirmed Kleiber's law, and showed that catabolism is more accurately proportional to the product of volume of distribution of a GFR marker to the 2/3 power times weight to the 1/4 power, which has, just like the other fractal scalars, and all the allometric research in hundreds of biology papers, been completely ignored by the medical community.

There is no 1.73 meter squared human, body surface area is spuriously correlated to metabolism 6,7, that is, that skin surface area does not cause kidney function, or oxygen consumption or even heat loss, as the latter is primarily by sweating in humans.

Thus use of inapplicable body scalings out of context leads to very confused conclusions which frequently makes medical results literature uninterpretable, and misleading. It really is a mess. My parting suggestion is to read about allometry before applying any body scaling, and be mindful that different body metabolic scalings are different for different metabolites.

1 Sarrus F, Rameaux J. Mémoire adressé à l'Academie Royale. Bulletin de l'académie royale de médicine. 1839;3:1094-100

2 Kleiber M. Body size and metabolic rate. Physiol Rev. 1947;27:511-41. 

3 Adolph EF. Quantitative relations in the physiological constitutions of animals. Science. 1949;109:579-85. 

4 Pinkel D. 1958  The use of body surface area as a criterion of drug dosage in cancer chemotherapy. Cancer Res. 1958;18:853-6.

5 West GB, Brown JH, Enquist BJ. The fourth dimension of life: fractal geometry and allometric scaling of organisms. Science. 1999;284:1677-9.

6 Wesolowski CA, Babyn PS, Puetter RC. An improved method for determining renal sufficiency using volume of distribution and weight from bolus Tc-99m-DTPA, two blood sample, paediatric data. Nucl Med Commun. 2006;27:963-70. doi:10.1097/01.mnm.0000237988.52572.2c.

7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spurious_correlation

I am really happy to know new and different reasons to leave the normalization of biological data on BSA

When you say "to leave" you probably mean "to remove." I would posit restricting body skin surface areas to allometrically correct usages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allometry). For example, for predicting fluid replacement needs as proportional to 3rd degree burn skin area. The success of BSA for chemotherapy is due to the exponent of weight (the 2/3rds power), being closer to metabolic demand (the 3/4ths power of weight) than the first power of weight. (error 3/4-2/3=1/12 versus 1-3/4=1/4). From this, in humans, GFR is often spuriously scaled by formulas of weight and height mimicking BSA, which we have shown is incorrect (doi:10.1097/01.mnm.0000237988.52572.2c). For veterinary medicine, GFR is still scaled using the first power of weight, which is even sillier than BSA scaling, because BSA scaling itself does not scale well enough to predict the metabolic demands of both animals and humans.  This gives some indication of what would have happened if Pinkel did not propose using BSA for dosimetry; we would still be dosing by the full power of weight. Asking people to use correct metabolic scaling for the appropriate metabolites is asking them to change their thinking on the subject. However, since thinking is not involved in copying answers from others, we face an uphill battle from proverbial somnambulists, who, when awakened, are more disoriented than receptive.