I’m reminded of Ferris Jabr’s well-reported 2019 piece for the Atlantic, exploring the shaky scientific basis of much of what we know as dentistry. It seems a lot harder to hold dentists (and their investors) to a uniform standard when the field is so much more art than science.
> ”The Truth About Dentistry”: It’s much less scientific—and more prone to gratuitous procedures—than you may think.
> The uneasy relationship between dentist and patient is further complicated by an unfortunate reality: Common dental procedures are not always as safe, effective, or durable as we are meant to believe. As a profession, dentistry has not yet applied the same level of self-scrutiny as medicine, or embraced as sweeping an emphasis on scientific evidence. “We are isolated from the larger health-care system. So when evidence-based policies are being made, dentistry is often left out of the equation,” says Jane Gillette, a dentist in Bozeman, Montana, who works closely with the American Dental Association’s Center for Evidence-Based Dentistry, which was established in 2007.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/05/the-tro...
(And previous HN discussion in 2022; 366 points, 342 comments; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31790226 )
> ”The Truth About Dentistry”: It’s much less scientific—and more prone to gratuitous procedures—than you may think.
> The uneasy relationship between dentist and patient is further complicated by an unfortunate reality: Common dental procedures are not always as safe, effective, or durable as we are meant to believe. As a profession, dentistry has not yet applied the same level of self-scrutiny as medicine, or embraced as sweeping an emphasis on scientific evidence. “We are isolated from the larger health-care system. So when evidence-based policies are being made, dentistry is often left out of the equation,” says Jane Gillette, a dentist in Bozeman, Montana, who works closely with the American Dental Association’s Center for Evidence-Based Dentistry, which was established in 2007.