This is not new. In 1997, William Ecenbarger, a Pulitzer-winning journalist, investigated the dental industry, going to fifty dentists in twenty-eight states, a

This is not new. In 1997, William Ecenbarger, a Pulitzer-winning journalist, investigated the dental industry, going to fifty dentists in twenty-eight states, and found that most of them strongly recommended unnecessary work. In any other field it would have been a come-to-Jesus moment, prompting total reform, but the industry escaped with a mountain of PR and no change. That was nearly thirty years ago. Since then, median gross dentists' billings have increased significantly. Support for evidence-based, low-intervention dentistry is practically nonexistent in the US. This all sounds like crackpot territory, but it is well supported by the evidence. Cochrane reviews have long been considered the gold standard in medicine for determining the efficacy of various interventions. When evaluated by Cochrane reviews, no other field fares so poorly as dentistry; nowhere else will you see such a parade of "insufficient evidence".