I mean - yea. Maybe your dentist never actually graduated dental school. Did you call the dental association to check he’s a member? Anyone can just print out a certificate on their home printer and put it on their wall, y’know. And even if he is, do you think the dental association actually called his college to verify the transcript he gave them when he joined in 1988 or whatever?
You really should do an independent audit of your dentist’s dentistry skills. Perhaps you should demand he does some kind of standardised test. But he can’t just go to a testing centre, you have no way of verifying that. He must do the test in front of you.
And how do you know the answers to the standardised test are correct, anyway? You will need to do a dentistry degree yourself first.
TLDR: A trustless society doesn’t work, and most people aren’t out to pull one over you.
Just to be clear, are you saying that given the choice between collecting data and lying about it vs. collecting data and being explicit about it, you’d choose the first option?
Yes. Absolutely. Because that would give me some legal recourse.
Would you hire someone who hides in the fine print they can steal from you and you can't do anything about it, or hire someone else and accept the chance that they might steal.
The choice is between a bad thing definitely happening, or a bad thing possibly happening.
edit: I should have just down-voted and moved on.