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Comment by xnx | Hacker News Reader

"It has been found that only 10% of dental care is based on validated research." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6375114/

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Approximately 0% of parachute-wearing is based on validated research. Doesn't mean it's not a good idea.

While I agree that dentistry absolutely has an overtreatment problem, there's enough evidence that some procedures result in pain relief at a minimum that we don't need to insist on double-blind trials -- and in fact performing such trials would be unethical.

>Approximately 0% of parachute-wearing is based on validated research.

But this is simply untrue and it undermines the rest of your point. The actual satirical statement is supposed to be about clinical trials (research studies involving humans), not validated research in general.

The study linked is not simply about clinical trials but rather than dentistry lacks validated research in general.

Please cite a double blind experiment for parachute wearing. One where some jumpers have parachutes and others do not have parachutes.

But seriously you have inferred that parachutes are important from other high quality evidence… This is exactly what dentists are doing. Then they get criticised because the study was not double blind for the exact treatment they recommended.

As I said you are confusing a clinical trial with validated research.

Dentists are criticized because there are clinical trials about the effectiveness of dental cleanings and they do not support the hypothesis that dental cleanings have a beneficial effect on dental health.

https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...

That study says that you can’t tell whether 12 or 24 month cleanings are better.

It does not compare cleaning with never cleaning. It is not evidence that you should never do a dental clean. It does not refute the idea that cleanings are beneficial.

There's no shortage of studies that all conclude the same thing, there is no evidence that dental cleanings have any benefit. You can do a Google search for yourself.

I'm not here to tell you personally what you should or shouldn't do. By all means keep doing dental cleanings, continue seeing your chiropractor, routinely checkup with your naturopath or guru, or whoever else you want to pay money to for whatever reason you want.

I'm just pointing out the objective fact that there is no evidence that doing so will provides any observable health benefit. It might benefit you psychologically, it might encourage you to take better care of your teeth if you see your dentist regularly, who knows... but as far as the science goes, well there just is nothing to substantiate dental cleaning.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230768070_Is_the_Ev...

https://www.cadth.ca/sites/default/files/pdf/htis/oct-2013/R...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK554695/

https://www.cochrane.org/news/routine-dental-care-does-evide...

I guess if the benefits of a treatment are obvious you don’t need a lot in the way of research, or even science at all, to recommend it.

But if the benefits are subtle or borderline, then it’s an interesting ethical dilemma. Which is the least unethical: withholding a potentially-beneficial treatment from a control group, or giving a potentially-non-beneficial treatment to everyone?

Funnily enough the paper you are citing has that quote but they cite another paper. The paper they cite says “It has been suggested that perhaps as little as 8% of dental care is justified…” and cites two more papers.

How is this acceptable in academic research? Nobody is citing the primary source and everybody is citing interpretations of some source that I can’t find the text of (probably because I’m on mobile).

tl;dr your citation is worthless through no fault of your own.

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