Probably it's both. If it would be really that easy to tell honest dentists (and society) would have no problem exposing the fake ones.

But in many cases dentists do protective/proactive treatment... that "brow spot looks like something, and maybe it's nothing, but let's make sure ..." ... which, yes, is reducing the number of cavities (by definition), but you have to get through the process. And if you have those spots for decades there's a good chance they would have continued to be nothing for more decades.

Even with Xray it's an educated guess. (I mean in cases when someone goes for a checkup.)

... but there's the non-tech aspect, meaning that the application of dental sealants seem to be spreading slower than warranted.

On the flip side, if you're waiting for society to change for your problem to be solved, you'll be waiting for a long time.

Doubly so if you are waiting for the Supreme Court to affirm your rights. Aside: After watching Biden win a rigged primary and be forced to resign with no vote just based on political pressure, my disillusionment with voting was complete. I’ll still do it, but just so I don’t have to lie to well intentioned people when they ask me if I did.

I have an example that disagrees.

I had a stomach bug, and a Physician was insistent I get xrays. I put my symptoms into chatGPT, and it agreed that the xray was unnecessary.

I saved hundreds of dollars, I learned my doctor was corrupt, and tbh... I already knew what I had before going to the doctors. I only needed the doctor to write the prescription.

Have you considered that your doctor might have had an actual reason to want you to get an X-ray and that maybe chatgpt is wrong? Absolutely wild to me that you distrust a human but feel like a glorified autocomplete is somehow completely trustworthy. They can both lie, but at least the human knows they are lying.

Buddy, the xray was to find a stone or something.

Anyway, chatgpt was right, physician was wrong.

So... we are denying reality now?

EDIT: I should mention, literally every patient was offered an xray. We were in a communal area. It didn't help that their ads across the wall were full of pseudoscience too.

Oh my god

Yeah, it's gotten to this point. Fucking unreal.