The only thing that annoys people more than someone who is wrong all the time is someone who is right all the time.
But if you’re going to run a company based on facts, you darn well better be right all the time. And we are. We solved surprise bills for non-electives. We exposed a popular toothpaste containing a (subsequently removed) pesticide. We urged employees to decline hydroxychloroquine ten weeks before the FDA did. We challenged the wellness industry establishment to retract two of their go-to recommendations -- to avoid olive and other table/cooking oils, and also to eat nonfat yogurt. (Both pieces of advice have now been removed from most risk assessments.)
We’ve also been subsequently proven right about stents, annual checkups on healthy employees, CT scan overuse, heartburn pills taken daily, and, most recently (meaning June 22), the massive amount of overtreatment in this country. To the last point, the COVID era has created a “natural experiment” proving what we have been teaching: that while a small portion of <65 Americans should be educated to get more care (those with unmanaged or undermanaged chronic conditions), the “worried well” do just fine with less.
But our proudest being-right-all-the-time moment is one of our legacy posts: how to treat a cavity effectively, painlessly, inexpensively, and quickly.
Longtime Quizzifans may remember questions on this topic from as far back as 2016, while more recent converts might recall our blog post from 2018. Quizzify tire-kickers have seen this topic addressed as the second question on our home page quiz, having replaced the pesticide-in-the-toothpaste question once Colgate took it out.
For cavities, our proposed figurative and literal solution is silver diamine fluoride, known as SDF – painless, fast, cheap, and effective. Yet your dentist has uttered not one word to you about applying this solution to cavities that you, or especially your children, have gotten. (If we're wrong, we would love to get in touch with your dentist. Al@quizzify.com .)
Is this because SDF doesn’t work? Quite the opposite. It works too well. Here are the six reasons we’re right and they’re wrong.
(1) The world uses this.
It has been in use in Japan for half a century, for example.
(2) The FDA has now approved it.
Well, that’s not entirely accurate.
More accurate would be the statement: “The FDA approved this six years ago."
Presciently, eminent author (and prominent Quizzifan) Dr. Marty Makary correctly predicted that dentists would not adopt SDF despite all its attributes. Or perhaps becaus