[tomnipotent]

> Not everyone interprets the scale the same way...

That's the exact point the author was making with this example. A doctor cannot normalize pain ratings across patients, and has to rely on each patient scoring their own pain relative to their own experiences. Your 2/10 could be 7/10 for someone else - all that matters is that you have a measurement stick to compare pain for yourself, so that medical staff know that your 3/10 is more than your 2/10.

[ummonk]

The problem is that my 2/10 is rather distressful and doctors assume it isn't, because they assume that self-reported pain ratings map consistently to subjective levels of distress across patients.