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How two British orthodontists became celebrities to incels

139 points by elsewhen 6y ago

pengaru 6y ago
I read an article not long ago that claimed the reason post-industrialized human teeth are all sort of messed up and don't fit in their small jaws is people don't chew on things early in life anymore. The claim was that while genetics determine the ultimate form a jaw will take, its complete growth requires stimulation from resistance and usage during the formative years. So if you have kids, I guess feed them ribs to gnaw on instead of spoon-delivered goop and give them chew toys instead of pacifiers?
- gerdesj 6y ago
  When I was teething I used to chew on Bonios - dog biccies and I carried on eating them until about six or seven. My nickname was Gnasher for a while. I had my four pre-molars removed aged 10 or 11 but my teeth were still too large for my gob. I wore a brace "spider" to try and move my upper incisors into something like the right place. I've had two of my wisdom teeth removed. One was impacted and the removal was a quite unpleasant ordeal over 45 minutes. At one point the (female) nurse put me in a hold that I (male) can only describe as a bit of a highlight but it was needed because breaking my tooth took a lot of grunt. The other was whipped out 20 years later before I even knew the dentist had got a grip on it. The pain relief from that extraction is nearly indescribable. I don't think that dentistry is quite as simple as we think. My problems seem to stem from when I was a toddler and cracked a baby incisor on a step. The tooth eventually "died" and went a bit weird. When it finally came out it had a huge root with a small hook on the end compared to the one next door to it. My teeth also seem to be too big for my jaw size. Incidentally my mum never used a dummy (pacifier) on her children. Ever.
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.is/IgV7x https://archive.is/IgV7x
- johnyzee 6y ago
  Thanks. Please try to add 'paywall' to your comment, that makes it easier to find quickly.
Xophmeister 6y ago
I found this super-interesting, but the article's cliff hanger was left unsatisfactorily unresolved. So skeletal records show that malocclusion wasn't regularly observed before around the time of the industrial revolution. Why not? I presume that mainstream orthodontics is evidence-based and that these guys are either deluded or charlatans, but on the other hand, they at least had the scientific curiosity to challenge the status quo. I don't buy their conclusion -- and the incel/alt right/whatever weirdness doesn't help -- but how does mainstream dentistry account for the sudden physiological change?
- wendyshu 6y ago
  So industry, but not agriculture, screwed up people's faces - a puzzle. Pollution? Watery processed e.g. canned foods (as mentioned in the article)? Preservative methods that replaced older foods like hardtack and tough salted meat?
  - klipt 6y ago
    https://whyy.org/segments/could-old-skulls-help-us-understand-why-we-have-crooked-teeth/ https://whyy.org/segments/could-old-skulls-help-us-understan... mentions a hypothesized shift from breast feeding to bottle feeding during the industrial revolution.
- drcode 6y ago
  Dentistry seems like an extremely conservative profession, and one that received very little attention from outsiders. This story definitely makes me wonder if there are still a lot of "low hanging fruit" in dentistry that have been left unexplored. It does seem rather strange that nearly be 100% of parents are told that their kids' mouths are terribly messed up and need expensive procedures. Never are parents offered any convincing scientific explanation for why everyone's mouth seems to go counter to all the usual biological rules of evolutionary adaptation.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Never are parents offered any convincing scientific explanation for why everyone's mouth seems to go counter to all the usual biological rules of evolutionary adaptation. Dentists (like medical doctors) generally aren't evolutionary biologists, and even if they were that also, we (humanity collectively) know a lot more about function than the evolutionary pressures that produce it. That said, the contribution, the contribution of optimum tooth alignment over a modern lifespan to reproductive fitness is probably very low over most of human evolution.
serf 6y ago
so, after the past few years incel has shifted from "involuntarily celibate" , to "young men who congregate online and who explain their lack of romantic success through a toxic and misogynistic ideology." , NYTimes definition mid-article, not mine. Pretty shitty, given that the title 'incel' is rarely self-appointed in comparison to the amount that its' bandied about by those who seek to insult by mockery or phrase. This points to an over-simplifying of the language. People who have poor romantic luck and charisma ARE NOT ALWAYS THE SAME as people who gather around social outlets online in order to share 'toxic and misogynistic' opinions -- but public opinion and media are referring to both parties as 'incels'. This means that the simply unlucky and uncharismatic folks are being pigeon-holed by society and the media to get out of the 'incel' title simply to stave off comparison between themselves and the bad incels. It's weird that a pro-sex movement finally won over the hearts of the public by demonizing and chastising those unfortunate enough to not have found a sexual partner. I wish people (and the media at large) would make a larger effort to mention that someone can be involuntarily celibate and mentally stable and balanced. The momentum lately to paint all involuntarily celibate people as mentally unstable and angry is a trend that will force a lot of people into life-changing mistakes more promptly than they would have been before the social pressure that equated routine sex with a partner as an indicator of mental stability and trustworthiness.
- scythe 6y ago
  >so, after the past few years incel has shifted from "involuntarily celibate" , to "young men who congregate online and who explain their lack of romantic success through a toxic and misogynistic ideology." , NYTimes definition mid-article, not mine. I don't know where the actual incel community hides now that Reddit banned pretty much all of their incarnations. 4chan relentlessly mocks them, Tumblr won't tolerate them, Facebook's real-name policy surely scares them away, and Twitter is just... Twitter. It was easier to define what an "incel" was when there was a big group of people rallying under the term "incel". The /r9k/-misogyny ideology lives on among people who reject the term, but the keyword is a ghost town, like Gamergate before it. If we want to consistently refer to this group of people, the name should probably come from outside, since they recycle names so often.
- Causality1 6y ago
Igelau 6y ago
Dentistry is a bit on the arcane side as it is. The Lund lawsuit. The sudden realization a few years ago that no one could actually point to proof that flossing does anything. When they quote an orthodontist (let's face it, they make a killing selling binding for mostly aesthetic reasons - at least in the US) as saying one of these Mews is an idiot... it stinks of the pot calling the kettle quack.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  > The sudden realization a few years ago that no one could actually point to proof that flossing does anything. Perhaps there's no existing study that says that, but that doesn't mean it isn't useful. Most of our day-to-day life hasn't been scientifically studied.
chubot 6y ago
Woah I have heard of the Mews, but had no idea about the "incel" connection. That feels mostly like a distraction to me. Here are some related HN links, nothing to do with "incels". I recommend reading "Jaws" by Kahn and "Breath" by Nestor. Both of them mention John Mew. He was an early advocate of the harmful effects of certain orthodontic practices on breathing. Sometimes the problem doesn't show up for decades. ----- Breathing habits are related to physical and mental health (wsj.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23271572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23271572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23434377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23434377 - Fitful nightly sleep linked to chronic inflammation, hardened arteries https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24012001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24012001 - Book recommendation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23665164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23665164 - Has anyone fixed their own bruxism? ----- I'm thinking of starting a blog on this subject, after mostly fixing my own breathing, with a lot of help... If anyone is interested feel free to mail me (e-mail in profile)
- phatfish 6y ago
  Yes, I don't think it needed to be in the title of the article. That was just click-bait on the part of the NYT. However its fine to mention it. If his work was made popular by angry men trying to get laid then that's how it happened. I did think he sounded exactly like the type Joe Rogan would go off the deep end with, sure enough half way through he says he is going to California to try and get on Joe's podcast, lol. Reading it there is something to underlying premise that how the jaw is used is reflected in how it develops physically. That makes logical sense. Whether any of treatments he recommends work seems to be very much unproven.
- emsy 6y ago
  There are a lot of dismissive comments in this thread about “Mewing”. Not because studies disproved his theory but because no study proves it yet, which I find ignorant. It reminds me of the critics of Semelweiss that laughed about the idea that hand washing would save patients lives. I’m not saying Mew is right, I simply think dismissing a plausible theory outright is dumb.
  - 6y ago
user_501238901 6y ago
There are still hunter-gatherer populations of humans who have the same lifestyle as they did 10 thousand years ago. Wouldn't studying their skulls settle this debate?
- tomdell 6y ago
  Yes, let’s just steal their dead and remove their skulls. Sounds wonderful.
  - user_501238901 6y ago
    We have x-rays now, they don't need to be dead if we want verify if their teeth are crooked.
    - ganstyles 6y ago
      On the other hand, I don't know any ten thousand year olds who are still alive.
  - dang 6y ago
    "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." "Don't be snarky." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- flir 6y ago
  Read the last paras. The unanswered question is much more interesting than the stuff about Mews: How do orthodox orthodontists answer the anthrpologist?
- AlotOfReading 6y ago
  Modern hunter-gatherers are generally not considered representative of our ancient ancestors. I can go into more detail if anyone's curious, but the short version is that they've had just as long to "evolve" as we have and the extant groups are those that were able to live in very marginal environments where no one else could, among other things. Of course there's debate both ways and lots of people trying to tease out the parts that are representative, but it's unsettled enough that I recommend just thinking of them as wholly unrepresentative.
darkerside 6y ago
Interesting to hear a perfect example of Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon on the article. Once the author knew what to look for, he started seeing examples of facial underdevelopment everywhere. I had a BM moment of my own. I recently heard a theory on censorship. It is most commonly exercised by powerful groups that are at risk of losing their power (example, Catholic church vs Galileo). And now I see it everywhere, including in the examples of quoted orthodontists who want to shut down discussion even though (or because) they don't have the answers.
- api 6y ago
  I don't see anyone doing a Galileo here. Nobody's arresting this guy for speaking. I do see him being dismissed a lot. Ultimately the burden of proof is on him as he is the one proposing an alternative hypothesis. He is free to meticulously document his work, propose studies, etc. It should also be possible to investigate his hypothesis by studying cultures that still do consume harder foods vs. individuals of the same genetic background who have migrated into the modern world and now consume softer stuff.
  - darkerside 6y ago
    This is what I'm talking about. I realize it's not state/church sponsored censorship, but the scientific community does suffer from groupthink and orthodoxy. When bringing up somebody's name immediately makes a group mad, it's usually because they are having an emotional reaction to a potential loss of power. It sounds like he is dedicating his life's work to building that alternative case, without the support of major academic or scientific institutions. I agree it should be easily provable or disprovable. Since it makes people so angry, and still hasn't been disproven, I'm inclined to think this hypothesis is worth more investigation. > The Mews have enraged the orthodontic community with the caustic, uncompromising way they’ve promoted their theories. They and the coterie of nontraditional practitioners who follow them often occupy the furthest reaches of the orthodontic fringe, written off for decades as a small but troublesome band of cranks and kooks. They almost never speak at mainstream conferences. Their papers, if they publish them, tend to appear in obscure, fourth-rate journals or profit-driven industry magazines. British and American orthodontic researchers told me that nearly every claim the Mews have put forth is wrong. Kevin O’Brien, a leading academic orthodontist in the U.K., described their work to me as “mostly discredited.” When I mentioned Mew to a prominent American orthodontist, he cut me off. “John Mew is an idiot,” he said. “A total idiot.”
eecc 6y ago
I guess it would be crazy to consider maxillofacial surgery just to reshape the maxilla. But I imagine progress in medical practices will increase the numbers of patients undergoing this sort of treatment making it progressively more viable... Seems that non surgical options exist, but require a significant investment in time: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3700158/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3700158/
im3w1l 6y ago
> But if crookedness lends a castle its beauty, it does the opposite to a face — and nothing concerns Mew more than the proliferation of ugly faces, which he considers a modern epidemic. In the process, [The Mews] they’ve become popular among incels, the “involuntary celibate” young men who congregate online and who explain their lack of romantic success through a toxic and misogynistic ideology. I don't understand, it sounds like they explain it with being ugly and try to fix it? But why do they go to this fringe science instead of proven solutions like plastic surgery?
- pjc50 6y ago
  > But why do they go to this fringe science instead of proven solutions like plastic surgery? Other way round: the problem itself is fringe pseudo science. The solution needs to be marketed, so people must be convinced that there is something wrong with them. People love pseudo science these days.
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    But there is something wrong with them, or else they would get laid. If people swipe the wrong way it must be either the looks or the composition of photos?
    - rsynnott 6y ago
      Or, I mean, their personality, possibly? Plenty of ugly people out there with partners.
      - redis_mlc 6y ago
        Online dating apps and initial swiping have been shown to depend almost solely on facial appearance, not personality. This Mewing procedure sounds perfect for people who are not getting swiped, actually.
      - im3w1l 6y ago
        If you use tinder, being ugly it makes things much harder. But there are other avenues where it doesn't matter as much. I've had very sweet friends though who struggled with those other avenues too because they worked in software (meeting few women at work) and were homebodies so didn't meet women in free time either. If they changed their entire life style around for the purpose of finding a woman maybe that could work, but it's a steep cost to pay without guaranteed success.
didibus 6y ago
> The orthodontists stressed that no one had ever conducted a credible study of orthotropics, and so all of the Mews’ claims of its efficacy were unproved To me, this is the gist. Obviously there's not infinite resources to research all theories, and one needs to make educated guess into where to best put the funds for which theory to research. That said, I do believe we're realizing that a lot of sciences have gotten a bit in a state of complacency, in some ways, the job is a job, you learn and apply. True curiosity and breakthrough is hard and rare, but it seems the institutions have also lost a drive towards them. Unless the article is missing other factual information, like hard overwhelming evidence of the genetics theory for example. But still, as a truth seeker. So it leaves me wondering, what else is being researched in orthodontistry? Where's the fund going? What theories are considered worth investigating? Or is the whole field just stale?
moltar 6y ago
This was described in the Breath book.
Mountain_Skies 6y ago
How is "incel" not a slur? Do people who are called incels actually like the label or has it been imposed on them as a pejorative? If so, why is acceptable?
- controversy 6y ago
  The reason it is an ok them slur is because they are not in fashion. They are seen as one of the last bastions of the patriarchy. Therefore they are the enemy. You will find they are often equated with Nazis. Since you can punch a Nazi, you should be able insult them without getting in trouble.
  - cvhashim 6y ago
    You forgot this —> /s
- btilly 6y ago
  Incel stands for "Involuntarily Celibate", and is a self-applied label. The subsequent online behavior of people who so self-identified is what has given it a bad reputation. But no matter how clearly they demonstrate the reasons why they remain celibate, the incels seem to remain proud of their label. Normal people, of course, see "incel" as a slur.
  - dependenttypes 6y ago
    > and is a self-applied label Is it though? You sometimes see people in the "woke" crowd call someone an incel without them self-identifying as one.
    - JohnBooty 6y ago
      Yes, you do see that. The etymology here is muddled... as etymology almost always is. It's also pretty interesting. The Wikipedia article has a really (surprisingly) good rundown on the history of the term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel So, yes, it was originally a term of self-identification dating all the way back to the 1990s. Usage as an insult began after self-identified incels began making headlines by murdering people. After that, "incel" became shorthand for men who were bitter, alienated, misogynistic, and potentially violent. A very similar thing happened in the 1990s, after a string of workplace killings by postal workers in the U.S. -- the phrase "going postal" entered the vernacular for a time. When "incel" is used as an insult like this, I don't believe it is ever meant as a literal reference to the subject's sexual activity or lack thereof; only as a reference to their bitter attitude.
rsynnott 6y ago
> “What would be the point?” he said. “If someone doesn’t look good, I’ll just say they didn’t comply; and if they do look good, I’ll just say they did.” Don't think you're supposed to say that bit out loud....
TrackerFF 6y ago
I'm gonna be honest, some years ago morbid curiosity lead me to visit the most prominent incel forum - this was before "incel" simply became the alias for "angry misogynistic males". The forum regulars were mostly self-proclaimed incels. They'd analyze "chads" to the most microscopic detail, and draw conclusions - to them, if there was a correlation, then that implied causation, because in the end, they were desperately looking for answers which they had no control over. Things they could change, such as social skills, attire, and what not were usually the laughing stock. No way were women interested in any of those aspects - women were, in their eyes, attracted to some male because his inherent facial features - again, often to the microscopic details. These guys were obsessed with the immutable (or near immutable), and would daydream about spending hundreds of thousands to alter their faces and bodies, to meet their own perceived beauty standards - which was always a beauty typical to masculine male models. But, yes, it became too much. These guys would practically do nothing but post sob stories, detailed analysis of male faces, and rants on women. It became one nasty echo-chamber where top posters were just feeding each others misery. If you were an incel, you were so simply because of your genes. There was nothing that could be done, other than very expensive and extensive surgeries. And then you had the extremists. Those that would idolize mass murderers, perceived or self-confessed incels. They'd start catfishing girls on dating apps, stalk people, all that. It was extremely toxic. Truly a bizarre, but sad community. I can def. see some normal kids joining just for the laughs, then slowly get normalized and radicalized, starting to both doubt themselves, and believing the propaganda.
- ColanR 6y ago
  Like that paradox for self-help groups: anyone in the forum who was actually successful in self-help wouldn't be on the forum anymore. The people who never got out would be the ones who looked at the wrong things.
  - mdoms 6y ago
    I have spent time on incel forums too, and I disagree with this assessment. There were lots of instances of guys who "got out" of inceldom, found partners and entered successful relationships. They would come to the forum and share their success stories and advice (and in most cases it was the common sense generic advice you would expect) and in every case the poster would be ridiculed in one of two ways. Either they were never an incel to begin with, just a Chad who had a prolonged dry spell and who had been an imposter or interlocutor (regardless of their tenure on the forum, often of several years) or they were just a flat out liar and imposter who had just come to give the same trite, cookie-cutter advice that they hear from every Chad and Stacey every day. The success stories only reinforced their toxic ideology.
RedBeetDeadpool 6y ago
Well this whole article is a glaring example of a fallacy argument. Let's just associate something that might take away a lot of income and tie it with a derogatory label. Paid for by the Dentist Association of America.
trabant00 6y ago
Why are trying to tie these two orthodontists to mysoginism, alt right, toxic internet forums, etc? Do they personally hold any of these views? Do they push such beliefs? Same thing with Jordan Peterson and other examples. These are character assassination attempts. And I am extremely sad to see this on front page.
GreeniFi 6y ago
Interesting article. The final “cliff-hanger” was great and not what I was expecting. But I wondered if there was bias in the collection of skulls. Did researchers, to satisfy their own biases, collect skulls which had a specific appearance? One thing that I noticed traipsing around German castles in my youth was how ugly, to my eyes, the portraits of medieval castle denizens were. It could well have been that poor diet, lack of antibiotics and similar were the reasons for this. Writing this, I recall an essay, sadly I can’t remember the writer, who said that adult beauty is really a function of exposure to parasites in childhood. Final point: I thought big jaws were a result of exposure to testosterone. As is clearly the case when you see the before/after pics or steroid users.
elric 6y ago
Previous similar article & discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23335368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23335368
Henk0 6y ago
Some thoughts after reading the article and browsing through the comments on NYT and here so far: 1. Choosing the angle of emphasising a (fairly recent in origin) connection to a maligned fringe group. Great way to taint a theory and practice that is not the current paradigm, and implicitly associating anyone who takes an interest in it with a community of people few want to be associated with 2. “Many self-identified incels have a highly mechanistic understanding of human relationships and believe they can improve their station in the sexual hierarchy through a practice called ‘looksmaxxing’: enhancing one’s sex appeal through weight lifting, skin and hair treatments, and even plastic surgery” – Try replacing ‘self-identified incels’ with ‘self-identified women’. Hardly controversial that getting in shape and grooming oneself increases one’s chances of finding a romantic partner, even if might be neither sufficient nor necessary. 3. “I already knew how I felt about some of the Mews’ claims – John’s absurd belief, for instance, that unattractive criminals are less likely to reoffend if their faces are made more beautiful” – Ok, so say you have two job applicants for the position you’re trying to fill for a customer-facing job. One applicant, though in all other ways a seemingly good candidate, has terrible teeth - think ‘faces of meth’ bad - the other, equal in all other respects has a mouth full of perfect glistening teeth and a winning smile. Who do you honestly think you’re more likely to pick? If you think the first, you’re most likely fooling yourself, and you’re also not good at your job, being to find the person most suited for interacting with your customers and making them feel at ease. Which of the candidates do you think is more likely to stumble down a path of criminality due to lack of good job opportunities? 4. Yup, the Mews are definitely odd characters, that in no way invalidates their theories, and apart from some representatives of the current paradigm in orthodontics expressing their disdain for the Mews and their theories, there’s no substantial evidence given for why they are so wrong – so wrong as to be villainous in the eyes of their critics it seems. The article ends with a cliff hanger with the perfect teethed skulls of yore. This is in fact very strong evidence that the heredity argument is plainly wrong. To argue that the crooked teeth and underdeveloped mouths that appear quite suddenly in conjunction with the industrial revolution are due to genetics is like ripping off your shirt to show the massive tattoo on your chest that says, “I know nothing about the timescales of evolution” 5. “This emphasis on compliance irks the Mews’ critics almost more than anything, because it allows them to blame their patients for any failures” – replace ‘the Mews’’ with ‘the sports coaches’ and *patients’ with ‘athletes’. All treatments that are not surgical require compliance to some extent to work. Changing your body through behavioural changes is obviously possible, but often requires more diligence and discipline than many are ready for. On a personal level, I fixed a massive overbite and a terrible posture as a teenager by consciously pushing my jaw forward all waking hours and straightening my back and paying attention to my posture while walking and standing. It takes time, but it generally works 6. What is the actual, real scandal exposed in this article? A couple of dentists who believe strongly in a theory and practice based on fairly good evolutionary reasoning and some obviously positive results? The fact that a community of bitter young men who deem themselves undateable and ugly are looking to these dentists ideas to improve aspects of themselves? Or maybe the fact that our current paradigm has no good explanation for why our collective mouths have on average degraded in modernity, and the standard treatments – that are both invasive and painful – apparently don’t fix the underlying problems. 7. From my own experience with everything from teeth issues to asthma, eczema and allergies, I know that the current paradigm of healthcare for all those problems is stuck on a track of symptom suppression via medication, with practitioners in general knowing nothing to very little about how things like breathing, nutrition, gut flora and many other things affect these conditions. Scientific and medical paradigms are always tough to change, and there’s a plethora of examples of mainstream practices and accepted truths that in hindsight appear absurd – such as the belief that hand washing was unnecessary for doctors between attending to patients that was dogma before Semmelweis – that are defended tooth and claw by the establishment, while detractors like Semmelweis are shunned and vilified. 8. Among the comments on NYT and here, many of which gleefully or dramatically jump straight at the incel angle and join in the hate and ridicule chorus (it’s apparently ok to hate and ridicule disillusioned, often autism spectrum young men who can’t find girlfriends. How sweet…), I see comments from dentists and individuals who testify to the problems of the current paradigm, and share stories of positive and negative change that lends credence to the Mews’ theories. How would the comments section have looked with another angle to the article? Are there examples of people who have started practicing these methods and have documented their results? Wouldn’t that be more interesting to look into? Oh well. edit: paragraph separation edit 2: spell check and specifying comments on NYT and here in point 8
rsynnott 6y ago
Figured out what bothers me so much about this; it’s medicalising beauty to a level basically no-one else does. Dentists are sometimes a bit inclined that way anyway (though many aren’t; my dentist told me that I could get orthodontic treatment if I wanted, but that my orthodontic issues were purely cosmetic and there would be no medical benefit; I declined and thought better of the dentist), but this is something else. Imagine this in a non-dental medical setting. Worst of all, imagine it in the context of fashion! You’d have untested quack treatments being prescribed to make people bulky now and skinny in a few years. Complete madness.
citizenpaul 6y ago
Why is this on "Hacker" news?

139 points by elsewhen 6y ago

I read an article not long ago that claimed the reason post-industrialized human teeth are all sort of messed up and don't fit in their small jaws is people don't chew on things early in life anymore. The claim was that while genetics determine the ultimate form a jaw will take, its complete growth requires stimulation from resistance and usage during the formative years. So if you have kids, I guess feed them ribs to gnaw on instead of spoon-delivered goop and give them chew toys instead of pacifiers?

gerdesj 6y ago
When I was teething I used to chew on Bonios - dog biccies and I carried on eating them until about six or seven. My nickname was Gnasher for a while. I had my four pre-molars removed aged 10 or 11 but my teeth were still too large for my gob. I wore a brace "spider" to try and move my upper incisors into something like the right place. I've had two of my wisdom teeth removed. One was impacted and the removal was a quite unpleasant ordeal over 45 minutes. At one point the (female) nurse put me in a hold that I (male) can only describe as a bit of a highlight but it was needed because breaking my tooth took a lot of grunt. The other was whipped out 20 years later before I even knew the dentist had got a grip on it. The pain relief from that extraction is nearly indescribable. I don't think that dentistry is quite as simple as we think. My problems seem to stem from when I was a toddler and cracked a baby incisor on a step. The tooth eventually "died" and went a bit weird. When it finally came out it had a huge root with a small hook on the end compared to the one next door to it. My teeth also seem to be too big for my jaw size. Incidentally my mum never used a dummy (pacifier) on her children. Ever.

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.is/IgV7x https://archive.is/IgV7x

johnyzee 6y ago
Thanks. Please try to add 'paywall' to your comment, that makes it easier to find quickly.

Xophmeister 6y ago

I found this super-interesting, but the article's cliff hanger was left unsatisfactorily unresolved. So skeletal records show that malocclusion wasn't regularly observed before around the time of the industrial revolution. Why not? I presume that mainstream orthodontics is evidence-based and that these guys are either deluded or charlatans, but on the other hand, they at least had the scientific curiosity to challenge the status quo. I don't buy their conclusion -- and the incel/alt right/whatever weirdness doesn't help -- but how does mainstream dentistry account for the sudden physiological change?

wendyshu 6y ago
So industry, but not agriculture, screwed up people's faces - a puzzle. Pollution? Watery processed e.g. canned foods (as mentioned in the article)? Preservative methods that replaced older foods like hardtack and tough salted meat?
- klipt 6y ago
  https://whyy.org/segments/could-old-skulls-help-us-understand-why-we-have-crooked-teeth/ https://whyy.org/segments/could-old-skulls-help-us-understan... mentions a hypothesized shift from breast feeding to bottle feeding during the industrial revolution.
drcode 6y ago
Dentistry seems like an extremely conservative profession, and one that received very little attention from outsiders. This story definitely makes me wonder if there are still a lot of "low hanging fruit" in dentistry that have been left unexplored. It does seem rather strange that nearly be 100% of parents are told that their kids' mouths are terribly messed up and need expensive procedures. Never are parents offered any convincing scientific explanation for why everyone's mouth seems to go counter to all the usual biological rules of evolutionary adaptation.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Never are parents offered any convincing scientific explanation for why everyone's mouth seems to go counter to all the usual biological rules of evolutionary adaptation. Dentists (like medical doctors) generally aren't evolutionary biologists, and even if they were that also, we (humanity collectively) know a lot more about function than the evolutionary pressures that produce it. That said, the contribution, the contribution of optimum tooth alignment over a modern lifespan to reproductive fitness is probably very low over most of human evolution.

serf 6y ago

so, after the past few years incel has shifted from "involuntarily celibate" , to "young men who congregate online and who explain their lack of romantic success through a toxic and misogynistic ideology." , NYTimes definition mid-article, not mine. Pretty shitty, given that the title 'incel' is rarely self-appointed in comparison to the amount that its' bandied about by those who seek to insult by mockery or phrase. This points to an over-simplifying of the language. People who have poor romantic luck and charisma ARE NOT ALWAYS THE SAME as people who gather around social outlets online in order to share 'toxic and misogynistic' opinions -- but public opinion and media are referring to both parties as 'incels'. This means that the simply unlucky and uncharismatic folks are being pigeon-holed by society and the media to get out of the 'incel' title simply to stave off comparison between themselves and the bad incels. It's weird that a pro-sex movement finally won over the hearts of the public by demonizing and chastising those unfortunate enough to not have found a sexual partner. I wish people (and the media at large) would make a larger effort to mention that someone can be involuntarily celibate and mentally stable and balanced. The momentum lately to paint all involuntarily celibate people as mentally unstable and angry is a trend that will force a lot of people into life-changing mistakes more promptly than they would have been before the social pressure that equated routine sex with a partner as an indicator of mental stability and trustworthiness.

scythe 6y ago
>so, after the past few years incel has shifted from "involuntarily celibate" , to "young men who congregate online and who explain their lack of romantic success through a toxic and misogynistic ideology." , NYTimes definition mid-article, not mine. I don't know where the actual incel community hides now that Reddit banned pretty much all of their incarnations. 4chan relentlessly mocks them, Tumblr won't tolerate them, Facebook's real-name policy surely scares them away, and Twitter is just... Twitter. It was easier to define what an "incel" was when there was a big group of people rallying under the term "incel". The /r9k/-misogyny ideology lives on among people who reject the term, but the keyword is a ghost town, like Gamergate before it. If we want to consistently refer to this group of people, the name should probably come from outside, since they recycle names so often.
Causality1 6y ago

Igelau 6y ago

Dentistry is a bit on the arcane side as it is. The Lund lawsuit. The sudden realization a few years ago that no one could actually point to proof that flossing does anything. When they quote an orthodontist (let's face it, they make a killing selling binding for mostly aesthetic reasons - at least in the US) as saying one of these Mews is an idiot... it stinks of the pot calling the kettle quack.

redis_mlc 6y ago
> The sudden realization a few years ago that no one could actually point to proof that flossing does anything. Perhaps there's no existing study that says that, but that doesn't mean it isn't useful. Most of our day-to-day life hasn't been scientifically studied.

chubot 6y ago

Woah I have heard of the Mews, but had no idea about the "incel" connection. That feels mostly like a distraction to me. Here are some related HN links, nothing to do with "incels". I recommend reading "Jaws" by Kahn and "Breath" by Nestor. Both of them mention John Mew. He was an early advocate of the harmful effects of certain orthodontic practices on breathing. Sometimes the problem doesn't show up for decades. ----- Breathing habits are related to physical and mental health (wsj.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23271572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23271572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23434377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23434377 - Fitful nightly sleep linked to chronic inflammation, hardened arteries https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24012001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24012001 - Book recommendation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23665164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23665164 - Has anyone fixed their own bruxism? ----- I'm thinking of starting a blog on this subject, after mostly fixing my own breathing, with a lot of help... If anyone is interested feel free to mail me (e-mail in profile)

phatfish 6y ago
Yes, I don't think it needed to be in the title of the article. That was just click-bait on the part of the NYT. However its fine to mention it. If his work was made popular by angry men trying to get laid then that's how it happened. I did think he sounded exactly like the type Joe Rogan would go off the deep end with, sure enough half way through he says he is going to California to try and get on Joe's podcast, lol. Reading it there is something to underlying premise that how the jaw is used is reflected in how it develops physically. That makes logical sense. Whether any of treatments he recommends work seems to be very much unproven.
emsy 6y ago
There are a lot of dismissive comments in this thread about “Mewing”. Not because studies disproved his theory but because no study proves it yet, which I find ignorant. It reminds me of the critics of Semelweiss that laughed about the idea that hand washing would save patients lives. I’m not saying Mew is right, I simply think dismissing a plausible theory outright is dumb.
- 6y ago

user_501238901 6y ago

There are still hunter-gatherer populations of humans who have the same lifestyle as they did 10 thousand years ago. Wouldn't studying their skulls settle this debate?

tomdell 6y ago
Yes, let’s just steal their dead and remove their skulls. Sounds wonderful.
- user_501238901 6y ago
  We have x-rays now, they don't need to be dead if we want verify if their teeth are crooked.
  - ganstyles 6y ago
    On the other hand, I don't know any ten thousand year olds who are still alive.
- dang 6y ago
  "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." "Don't be snarky." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
flir 6y ago
Read the last paras. The unanswered question is much more interesting than the stuff about Mews: How do orthodox orthodontists answer the anthrpologist?
AlotOfReading 6y ago
Modern hunter-gatherers are generally not considered representative of our ancient ancestors. I can go into more detail if anyone's curious, but the short version is that they've had just as long to "evolve" as we have and the extant groups are those that were able to live in very marginal environments where no one else could, among other things. Of course there's debate both ways and lots of people trying to tease out the parts that are representative, but it's unsettled enough that I recommend just thinking of them as wholly unrepresentative.

darkerside 6y ago

Interesting to hear a perfect example of Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon on the article. Once the author knew what to look for, he started seeing examples of facial underdevelopment everywhere. I had a BM moment of my own. I recently heard a theory on censorship. It is most commonly exercised by powerful groups that are at risk of losing their power (example, Catholic church vs Galileo). And now I see it everywhere, including in the examples of quoted orthodontists who want to shut down discussion even though (or because) they don't have the answers.

api 6y ago
I don't see anyone doing a Galileo here. Nobody's arresting this guy for speaking. I do see him being dismissed a lot. Ultimately the burden of proof is on him as he is the one proposing an alternative hypothesis. He is free to meticulously document his work, propose studies, etc. It should also be possible to investigate his hypothesis by studying cultures that still do consume harder foods vs. individuals of the same genetic background who have migrated into the modern world and now consume softer stuff.
- darkerside 6y ago
  This is what I'm talking about. I realize it's not state/church sponsored censorship, but the scientific community does suffer from groupthink and orthodoxy. When bringing up somebody's name immediately makes a group mad, it's usually because they are having an emotional reaction to a potential loss of power. It sounds like he is dedicating his life's work to building that alternative case, without the support of major academic or scientific institutions. I agree it should be easily provable or disprovable. Since it makes people so angry, and still hasn't been disproven, I'm inclined to think this hypothesis is worth more investigation. > The Mews have enraged the orthodontic community with the caustic, uncompromising way they’ve promoted their theories. They and the coterie of nontraditional practitioners who follow them often occupy the furthest reaches of the orthodontic fringe, written off for decades as a small but troublesome band of cranks and kooks. They almost never speak at mainstream conferences. Their papers, if they publish them, tend to appear in obscure, fourth-rate journals or profit-driven industry magazines. British and American orthodontic researchers told me that nearly every claim the Mews have put forth is wrong. Kevin O’Brien, a leading academic orthodontist in the U.K., described their work to me as “mostly discredited.” When I mentioned Mew to a prominent American orthodontist, he cut me off. “John Mew is an idiot,” he said. “A total idiot.”

eecc 6y ago

I guess it would be crazy to consider maxillofacial surgery just to reshape the maxilla. But I imagine progress in medical practices will increase the numbers of patients undergoing this sort of treatment making it progressively more viable... Seems that non surgical options exist, but require a significant investment in time: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3700158/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3700158/

im3w1l 6y ago

> But if crookedness lends a castle its beauty, it does the opposite to a face — and nothing concerns Mew more than the proliferation of ugly faces, which he considers a modern epidemic. In the process, [The Mews] they’ve become popular among incels, the “involuntary celibate” young men who congregate online and who explain their lack of romantic success through a toxic and misogynistic ideology. I don't understand, it sounds like they explain it with being ugly and try to fix it? But why do they go to this fringe science instead of proven solutions like plastic surgery?

pjc50 6y ago
> But why do they go to this fringe science instead of proven solutions like plastic surgery? Other way round: the problem itself is fringe pseudo science. The solution needs to be marketed, so people must be convinced that there is something wrong with them. People love pseudo science these days.
- im3w1l 6y ago
  But there is something wrong with them, or else they would get laid. If people swipe the wrong way it must be either the looks or the composition of photos?
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    Or, I mean, their personality, possibly? Plenty of ugly people out there with partners.
    - redis_mlc 6y ago
      Online dating apps and initial swiping have been shown to depend almost solely on facial appearance, not personality. This Mewing procedure sounds perfect for people who are not getting swiped, actually.
    - im3w1l 6y ago
      If you use tinder, being ugly it makes things much harder. But there are other avenues where it doesn't matter as much. I've had very sweet friends though who struggled with those other avenues too because they worked in software (meeting few women at work) and were homebodies so didn't meet women in free time either. If they changed their entire life style around for the purpose of finding a woman maybe that could work, but it's a steep cost to pay without guaranteed success.

didibus 6y ago

> The orthodontists stressed that no one had ever conducted a credible study of orthotropics, and so all of the Mews’ claims of its efficacy were unproved To me, this is the gist. Obviously there's not infinite resources to research all theories, and one needs to make educated guess into where to best put the funds for which theory to research. That said, I do believe we're realizing that a lot of sciences have gotten a bit in a state of complacency, in some ways, the job is a job, you learn and apply. True curiosity and breakthrough is hard and rare, but it seems the institutions have also lost a drive towards them. Unless the article is missing other factual information, like hard overwhelming evidence of the genetics theory for example. But still, as a truth seeker. So it leaves me wondering, what else is being researched in orthodontistry? Where's the fund going? What theories are considered worth investigating? Or is the whole field just stale?

moltar 6y ago

This was described in the Breath book.

Mountain_Skies 6y ago

How is "incel" not a slur? Do people who are called incels actually like the label or has it been imposed on them as a pejorative? If so, why is acceptable?

controversy 6y ago
The reason it is an ok them slur is because they are not in fashion. They are seen as one of the last bastions of the patriarchy. Therefore they are the enemy. You will find they are often equated with Nazis. Since you can punch a Nazi, you should be able insult them without getting in trouble.
- cvhashim 6y ago
  You forgot this —> /s
btilly 6y ago
Incel stands for "Involuntarily Celibate", and is a self-applied label. The subsequent online behavior of people who so self-identified is what has given it a bad reputation. But no matter how clearly they demonstrate the reasons why they remain celibate, the incels seem to remain proud of their label. Normal people, of course, see "incel" as a slur.
- dependenttypes 6y ago
  > and is a self-applied label Is it though? You sometimes see people in the "woke" crowd call someone an incel without them self-identifying as one.
  - JohnBooty 6y ago
    Yes, you do see that. The etymology here is muddled... as etymology almost always is. It's also pretty interesting. The Wikipedia article has a really (surprisingly) good rundown on the history of the term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel So, yes, it was originally a term of self-identification dating all the way back to the 1990s. Usage as an insult began after self-identified incels began making headlines by murdering people. After that, "incel" became shorthand for men who were bitter, alienated, misogynistic, and potentially violent. A very similar thing happened in the 1990s, after a string of workplace killings by postal workers in the U.S. -- the phrase "going postal" entered the vernacular for a time. When "incel" is used as an insult like this, I don't believe it is ever meant as a literal reference to the subject's sexual activity or lack thereof; only as a reference to their bitter attitude.

rsynnott 6y ago

> “What would be the point?” he said. “If someone doesn’t look good, I’ll just say they didn’t comply; and if they do look good, I’ll just say they did.” Don't think you're supposed to say that bit out loud....

TrackerFF 6y ago

I'm gonna be honest, some years ago morbid curiosity lead me to visit the most prominent incel forum - this was before "incel" simply became the alias for "angry misogynistic males". The forum regulars were mostly self-proclaimed incels. They'd analyze "chads" to the most microscopic detail, and draw conclusions - to them, if there was a correlation, then that implied causation, because in the end, they were desperately looking for answers which they had no control over. Things they could change, such as social skills, attire, and what not were usually the laughing stock. No way were women interested in any of those aspects - women were, in their eyes, attracted to some male because his inherent facial features - again, often to the microscopic details. These guys were obsessed with the immutable (or near immutable), and would daydream about spending hundreds of thousands to alter their faces and bodies, to meet their own perceived beauty standards - which was always a beauty typical to masculine male models. But, yes, it became too much. These guys would practically do nothing but post sob stories, detailed analysis of male faces, and rants on women. It became one nasty echo-chamber where top posters were just feeding each others misery. If you were an incel, you were so simply because of your genes. There was nothing that could be done, other than very expensive and extensive surgeries. And then you had the extremists. Those that would idolize mass murderers, perceived or self-confessed incels. They'd start catfishing girls on dating apps, stalk people, all that. It was extremely toxic. Truly a bizarre, but sad community. I can def. see some normal kids joining just for the laughs, then slowly get normalized and radicalized, starting to both doubt themselves, and believing the propaganda.

ColanR 6y ago
Like that paradox for self-help groups: anyone in the forum who was actually successful in self-help wouldn't be on the forum anymore. The people who never got out would be the ones who looked at the wrong things.
- mdoms 6y ago
  I have spent time on incel forums too, and I disagree with this assessment. There were lots of instances of guys who "got out" of inceldom, found partners and entered successful relationships. They would come to the forum and share their success stories and advice (and in most cases it was the common sense generic advice you would expect) and in every case the poster would be ridiculed in one of two ways. Either they were never an incel to begin with, just a Chad who had a prolonged dry spell and who had been an imposter or interlocutor (regardless of their tenure on the forum, often of several years) or they were just a flat out liar and imposter who had just come to give the same trite, cookie-cutter advice that they hear from every Chad and Stacey every day. The success stories only reinforced their toxic ideology.

RedBeetDeadpool 6y ago

Well this whole article is a glaring example of a fallacy argument. Let's just associate something that might take away a lot of income and tie it with a derogatory label. Paid for by the Dentist Association of America.

trabant00 6y ago

Why are trying to tie these two orthodontists to mysoginism, alt right, toxic internet forums, etc? Do they personally hold any of these views? Do they push such beliefs? Same thing with Jordan Peterson and other examples. These are character assassination attempts. And I am extremely sad to see this on front page.

GreeniFi 6y ago

Interesting article. The final “cliff-hanger” was great and not what I was expecting. But I wondered if there was bias in the collection of skulls. Did researchers, to satisfy their own biases, collect skulls which had a specific appearance? One thing that I noticed traipsing around German castles in my youth was how ugly, to my eyes, the portraits of medieval castle denizens were. It could well have been that poor diet, lack of antibiotics and similar were the reasons for this. Writing this, I recall an essay, sadly I can’t remember the writer, who said that adult beauty is really a function of exposure to parasites in childhood. Final point: I thought big jaws were a result of exposure to testosterone. As is clearly the case when you see the before/after pics or steroid users.

elric 6y ago

Previous similar article & discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23335368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23335368

Henk0 6y ago

Some thoughts after reading the article and browsing through the comments on NYT and here so far: 1. Choosing the angle of emphasising a (fairly recent in origin) connection to a maligned fringe group. Great way to taint a theory and practice that is not the current paradigm, and implicitly associating anyone who takes an interest in it with a community of people few want to be associated with 2. “Many self-identified incels have a highly mechanistic understanding of human relationships and believe they can improve their station in the sexual hierarchy through a practice called ‘looksmaxxing’: enhancing one’s sex appeal through weight lifting, skin and hair treatments, and even plastic surgery” – Try replacing ‘self-identified incels’ with ‘self-identified women’. Hardly controversial that getting in shape and grooming oneself increases one’s chances of finding a romantic partner, even if might be neither sufficient nor necessary. 3. “I already knew how I felt about some of the Mews’ claims – John’s absurd belief, for instance, that unattractive criminals are less likely to reoffend if their faces are made more beautiful” – Ok, so say you have two job applicants for the position you’re trying to fill for a customer-facing job. One applicant, though in all other ways a seemingly good candidate, has terrible teeth - think ‘faces of meth’ bad - the other, equal in all other respects has a mouth full of perfect glistening teeth and a winning smile. Who do you honestly think you’re more likely to pick? If you think the first, you’re most likely fooling yourself, and you’re also not good at your job, being to find the person most suited for interacting with your customers and making them feel at ease. Which of the candidates do you think is more likely to stumble down a path of criminality due to lack of good job opportunities? 4. Yup, the Mews are definitely odd characters, that in no way invalidates their theories, and apart from some representatives of the current paradigm in orthodontics expressing their disdain for the Mews and their theories, there’s no substantial evidence given for why they are so wrong – so wrong as to be villainous in the eyes of their critics it seems. The article ends with a cliff hanger with the perfect teethed skulls of yore. This is in fact very strong evidence that the heredity argument is plainly wrong. To argue that the crooked teeth and underdeveloped mouths that appear quite suddenly in conjunction with the industrial revolution are due to genetics is like ripping off your shirt to show the massive tattoo on your chest that says, “I know nothing about the timescales of evolution” 5. “This emphasis on compliance irks the Mews’ critics almost more than anything, because it allows them to blame their patients for any failures” – replace ‘the Mews’’ with ‘the sports coaches’ and *patients’ with ‘athletes’. All treatments that are not surgical require compliance to some extent to work. Changing your body through behavioural changes is obviously possible, but often requires more diligence and discipline than many are ready for. On a personal level, I fixed a massive overbite and a terrible posture as a teenager by consciously pushing my jaw forward all waking hours and straightening my back and paying attention to my posture while walking and standing. It takes time, but it generally works 6. What is the actual, real scandal exposed in this article? A couple of dentists who believe strongly in a theory and practice based on fairly good evolutionary reasoning and some obviously positive results? The fact that a community of bitter young men who deem themselves undateable and ugly are looking to these dentists ideas to improve aspects of themselves? Or maybe the fact that our current paradigm has no good explanation for why our collective mouths have on average degraded in modernity, and the standard treatments – that are both invasive and painful – apparently don’t fix the underlying problems. 7. From my own experience with everything from teeth issues to asthma, eczema and allergies, I know that the current paradigm of healthcare for all those problems is stuck on a track of symptom suppression via medication, with practitioners in general knowing nothing to very little about how things like breathing, nutrition, gut flora and many other things affect these conditions. Scientific and medical paradigms are always tough to change, and there’s a plethora of examples of mainstream practices and accepted truths that in hindsight appear absurd – such as the belief that hand washing was unnecessary for doctors between attending to patients that was dogma before Semmelweis – that are defended tooth and claw by the establishment, while detractors like Semmelweis are shunned and vilified. 8. Among the comments on NYT and here, many of which gleefully or dramatically jump straight at the incel angle and join in the hate and ridicule chorus (it’s apparently ok to hate and ridicule disillusioned, often autism spectrum young men who can’t find girlfriends. How sweet…), I see comments from dentists and individuals who testify to the problems of the current paradigm, and share stories of positive and negative change that lends credence to the Mews’ theories. How would the comments section have looked with another angle to the article? Are there examples of people who have started practicing these methods and have documented their results? Wouldn’t that be more interesting to look into? Oh well. edit: paragraph separation edit 2: spell check and specifying comments on NYT and here in point 8

rsynnott 6y ago

Figured out what bothers me so much about this; it’s medicalising beauty to a level basically no-one else does. Dentists are sometimes a bit inclined that way anyway (though many aren’t; my dentist told me that I could get orthodontic treatment if I wanted, but that my orthodontic issues were purely cosmetic and there would be no medical benefit; I declined and thought better of the dentist), but this is something else. Imagine this in a non-dental medical setting. Worst of all, imagine it in the context of fashion! You’d have untested quack treatments being prescribed to make people bulky now and skinny in a few years. Complete madness.

citizenpaul 6y ago

Why is this on "Hacker" news?