This is awesome. I want more articles like this. I want to read an article like this every day until every trip to the pharmacy or grocery store makes me feel full of intimate and arcane knowledge, and every aspect of my life is 10% more fulfilling.
A followup question I’d be interested in: if I bought an electric toothbrush, I would (a) have trouble bringing it during travels (I am traveling maybe two months out of the year), and (b) when my roommates’ electric brushes are plugged in, I often bump into them which I both dislike and am concerned about the effects on their cleanliness.
However, whatever the results in this case, I personally already have an extremely low rate of cavities (on the order of .05/year) and so am probably less interested in paying more for dental care than average; changes in habits should have orders of magnitude lower expected value for me. Which is to say that if nobody else cares about these questions, it’s fine if they go unanswered.
There’s probably a lesson here about “noticing you are surprised” and “thinking outside the box” in this ballpark. An attempt to learn about “rational toothpaste” turns up surprises which are hints at a cause of the surprise, which probably has mechanisms, which are probably opportunities to learn how to manipulate the world.
My best working hypothesis on this subject is that cavities are a symptom of a mostly-vertically-transmitted (ie parent-to-child) infectious disease (popular press meta-analysis). At some point in the next 2 to 20 years I expect the oral microbiome to be figured out, and a dental treatment systematized so that people’s oral “symbionts” can be upgraded so that those in the “surprising” high-cavity regimes can be adjusted to be in low-cavity regimes.
I expect this to be at least a little bit tricky, because I’ve heard that changing one’s bacterial symbionts in general (skin, gut, whatever) usually take more than one-time shocks. For example, I don’t think people generally have huge shifts in their oral ecology just because they kiss someone a bit, and so (low probability guess)… oral symbiont upgrades will probably take something like regular pro-biotic mouthwashes you use a couple times a day for N weeks to make sure the shift occurs.
FWIW, I was in the range of 0.05/year as a child, then had a period of not seeing a dentist for ~5 years. I … had a lot of dental work done recently, and have developed one (1) new cavity since starting that cleanup a year ago. Not sure where I’ll end up long-term, obviously.
p(Dentist does this) * p(Dentist gets caught when doing this) = number of police reports on the subject. I’d expect this to be the sort of thing the media would have a ton of fun with, and I don’t recall ever seeing a news report on this subject, so I’d assume # of police reports is very low.
Either this is an amazingly easy crime to get away with, or not many dentists do it. By default, I’d favor the latter theory by a wide margin, but I’ll concede I’m uneducated on how hard it would be to detect something like this (at a minimum, if another dentist can notice these “starter holes” then simply getting a second opinion would reveal the fraud. The alternate is to assume a national dental conspiracy...)
“Starter holes,” really? Think for five minutes. Dental health is invisibly reinforced or ruined by saliva chemistry, which a competent-yet-malicious professional could sabotage in ways most laymen—even a professional investigator such as a police office—would be oblivious to. http://ua.johntynes.com/content_comments.php?id=P3105_0_3_0
I’m not worried about laymen catching it—I’m worried about other dentists noticing. “Second opinion” and all that.
Mostly, I’d assume (but could well be wrong) that the consequences are worse for a dentist than for, say, an auto-mechanic, so there’s more incentive for a dentist to be honest.
You mean like this one?
I don’t personally think many dentists would sabotage your teeth, but there might be some correlation such that the drilling vibration weakens the tooth structure somehow, leading to future cavities. I’ll save that research for a time when I have better software and am really bored, though.
I’ve had 1 cavity in my life that had to be filled (yeah, adds up to 0.05/year). However, it probably depends on factors like mineral composition of teeth, which could be genetic, as well as lifestyle factors like Coke/soft drink consumption, etc.
This is awesome. I want more articles like this. I want to read an article like this every day until every trip to the pharmacy or grocery store makes me feel full of intimate and arcane knowledge, and every aspect of my life is 10% more fulfilling.
A followup question I’d be interested in: if I bought an electric toothbrush, I would (a) have trouble bringing it during travels (I am traveling maybe two months out of the year), and (b) when my roommates’ electric brushes are plugged in, I often bump into them which I both dislike and am concerned about the effects on their cleanliness.
However, whatever the results in this case, I personally already have an extremely low rate of cavities (on the order of .05/year) and so am probably less interested in paying more for dental care than average; changes in habits should have orders of magnitude lower expected value for me. Which is to say that if nobody else cares about these questions, it’s fine if they go unanswered.
Likewise. Never had one. I don’t even use toothpaste. Laplace says 1⁄24 chance per year.
I was actually really surprised by OP’s 1.5/yr rate.
There’s probably a lesson here about “noticing you are surprised” and “thinking outside the box” in this ballpark. An attempt to learn about “rational toothpaste” turns up surprises which are hints at a cause of the surprise, which probably has mechanisms, which are probably opportunities to learn how to manipulate the world.
My best working hypothesis on this subject is that cavities are a symptom of a mostly-vertically-transmitted (ie parent-to-child) infectious disease (popular press meta-analysis). At some point in the next 2 to 20 years I expect the oral microbiome to be figured out, and a dental treatment systematized so that people’s oral “symbionts” can be upgraded so that those in the “surprising” high-cavity regimes can be adjusted to be in low-cavity regimes.
I expect this to be at least a little bit tricky, because I’ve heard that changing one’s bacterial symbionts in general (skin, gut, whatever) usually take more than one-time shocks. For example, I don’t think people generally have huge shifts in their oral ecology just because they kiss someone a bit, and so (low probability guess)… oral symbiont upgrades will probably take something like regular pro-biotic mouthwashes you use a couple times a day for N weeks to make sure the shift occurs.
Probably a statistical fluke, but I have only ever had one cavity, and that was before I stopped using toothpaste.
FWIW, I was in the range of 0.05/year as a child, then had a period of not seeing a dentist for ~5 years. I … had a lot of dental work done recently, and have developed one (1) new cavity since starting that cleanup a year ago. Not sure where I’ll end up long-term, obviously.
Maybe some dentists drill “starter holes” along with their legitimate work...
p(Dentist does this) * p(Dentist gets caught when doing this) = number of police reports on the subject. I’d expect this to be the sort of thing the media would have a ton of fun with, and I don’t recall ever seeing a news report on this subject, so I’d assume # of police reports is very low.
Either this is an amazingly easy crime to get away with, or not many dentists do it. By default, I’d favor the latter theory by a wide margin, but I’ll concede I’m uneducated on how hard it would be to detect something like this (at a minimum, if another dentist can notice these “starter holes” then simply getting a second opinion would reveal the fraud. The alternate is to assume a national dental conspiracy...)
“Starter holes,” really? Think for five minutes. Dental health is invisibly reinforced or ruined by saliva chemistry, which a competent-yet-malicious professional could sabotage in ways most laymen—even a professional investigator such as a police office—would be oblivious to. http://ua.johntynes.com/content_comments.php?id=P3105_0_3_0
I’m not worried about laymen catching it—I’m worried about other dentists noticing. “Second opinion” and all that.
Mostly, I’d assume (but could well be wrong) that the consequences are worse for a dentist than for, say, an auto-mechanic, so there’s more incentive for a dentist to be honest.
You mean like this one? I don’t personally think many dentists would sabotage your teeth, but there might be some correlation such that the drilling vibration weakens the tooth structure somehow, leading to future cavities. I’ll save that research for a time when I have better software and am really bored, though.
I’ve had 1 cavity in my life that had to be filled (yeah, adds up to 0.05/year). However, it probably depends on factors like mineral composition of teeth, which could be genetic, as well as lifestyle factors like Coke/soft drink consumption, etc.
I use an electric toothbrush that runs on one AA battery.