I don’t floss. This makes me a mischievous, unpleasant person who walks around with food particles between my teeth, as my dentist always hints. The scariest thing about seeing a dentist is receiving a condescending lecture about the benefits of flossing.
That’s where I found my secret weapon. This is his 2019 research review by Cochrane. Cochrane is an independent network of scientists widely considered to produce the most golden research. They compiled studies that investigated the effects of using dental floss and other devices to clean between teeth on dental health. There were 35 randomized controlled trials with a total of 3,929 participants.
The results were dire. A meta-analysis found that flossing “may” reduce gingivitis, but the effect was uncertain and rarely statistically significant. No studies have investigated whether flossing prevents cavities.
At my next appointment, when my dentist innocently asked about my flossing habits, I dropped a bomb of newfound knowledge. She replied that it would be good to floss, so she left it that way. A few hours later, I received a call from another dentist at the same practice. “A colleague told me what you said about flossing,” he said indignantly. He further said: “I know the evidence, but if someone had to choose between just brushing and just flossing, I would choose flossing.”
I thought I was born in an age of science and reason. But what my journey down the rabbit hole with dental floss has taught me is that this isn’t as true as I expected. If it’s just dentistry, which has traditionally been the western part of medicine, it doesn’t really matter. But the more we learn about science, the more we discover fundamental mysteries that we thought were solved long ago. Perhaps we have emerged from the Dark Ages, but our own time still seems quite dim.
How do we understand a world where the sands of science are always changing and there are still many unknowns? It took a long time, but we took everything in stride and were always humble about what we had to do. I learned to be and come to terms with the situation. do We know what we’re doing and are always optimistic intention.
Getting there was tough. Because I’ve had to learn over and over again that extreme convictions require extraordinary evidence, and that the evidence we have is usually far from extraordinary. For example, our frontline antidepressants are said to work by altering serotonin levels in the brain, but a review published last year found that there is no consistent evidence that serotonin is significantly involved in depression. It turns out there isn’t one at all. (Perhaps that’s why antidepressants aren’t very effective, especially in the long term.) It seems obvious that sunscreen should protect against skin cancer, but in 2018 A meta-analysis in 2017 could not confirm this to be true and concluded more. Research was needed. Popular ingredients in many over-the-counter cold medicines probably won’t do you any good either.
There are many mysteries in basic science as well. Physicists still don’t know whether cold water freezes faster than hot water. Astronomers have hypothesized that the universe is filled with invisible “dark” matter and energy, but they don’t actually know what it is. No one even knows where cigarette butts come from.
When I was young, I accepted every scientific discovery and reversal with righteous conviction. For example, even if you find evidence that sunscreen doesn’t prevent skin cancer, that’s not the case. And thankfully, we finally found out the truth. On trips to the beach, I adamantly refuse when offered a bottle of sunscreen, lecture my family and friends about its far-fetched promises, and sometimes curse the name of Hollywood director and sunscreen boss Baz Luhrmann. I did.
As I grew older and completed my Ph.D., my disbelief turned to despair. Good science is simply too difficult. If you really wanted to know even something as simple as whether or not flossing works, you could randomly assign thousands of people to floss or not, and then ask them to actually floss (or not). ) and then had to follow up years later. . Anyone who is willing to undergo such trials for the sake of science is definitely not representative of humanity as a whole. How do you know they’re flossing properly in the first place? It’s best to give up.
What sustains me now is neither certainty nor despair, but a determined and humble optimism. The correct answer is often simply unknown, and you may die without knowing the truth.And still the truth is intention Someday it will become known. Just as we solved many mysteries that baffled our ancestors, so will our descendants solve many mysteries that baffled us. Our ignorance is profound, tolerable, and temporary. There are only two real mistakes. One is that we believe we can no longer make mistakes, and the other is that we believe that those mistakes are permanent and irreversible.
This attitude is difficult to maintain once you realize how much remains to be figured out. And we often have to cultivate this attitude ourselves, because educators and experts often do not teach us this. When I was in high school, my science teacher implied that the universe was a collection of boring ancient facts and that my job was to memorize and repeat them. No one mentioned any unsolved mysteries or suggested that solving mysteries might be a lot of fun.
Experts have no qualms about issuing sweeping recommendations despite scant evidence and shaming those who don’t follow them. In a heartbreaking example from February 2020, then-Surgeon General Jerome Adams scathingly tweeted: While these are not effective in preventing the general public from contracting the #coronavirus, they are putting health care providers and our communities at risk if we are unable to get health care providers to care for sick patients. You will be exposed to ” There was no scientific basis for such strong claims. Three years later, a recent meta-analysis by our friends at Cochrane concluded that “there is uncertainty about the effects of face masks.”
Our teachers and officials may believe that the public simply cannot handle uncertainty. And perhaps that’s why they’re so confident in the science, even if it’s flawed. But the best way to develop an informed public is to give them the evidence we have, not the evidence we wish they had.
My dentist may have talked to me matter-of-factly about flossing. “Look, no one has done good research on this. But it makes sense in theory why flossing works, and in my experience flossing helps patients. So I highly recommend that you do that.’ ” That would have made me feel respected and even more curious. Maybe I would have wanted to be the one to lead the definitive dental floss research. At least I could have picked up some floss. For now, I’m still skeptical that rubbing the sides of my teeth with nylon is a good use of my time, but I’m sure I’ll get around to it someday. I hope that you will understand.