Dr. Louis F. DeSantis writes in an April JADA letter to the editor that "trade journals that pass themselves off as educational tools" are a major source of a "crisis" in dentistry. He says these [publications] offer "no editorial review process" and feature articles by "uncredentialed" authors. "The answer," he says, is "dental journals that require review by an editorial board and dental society-endorsed continuing education."
Perhaps we turn to trade journals when peer-reviewed journals don’t address our questions. Perhaps our questions don’t fit the mission of the peer-reviewed journals. Actually, most trade journals do have an editorial board and many are in fact peer-reviewed. The real danger lies in assuming that anything we read is the truth because it has been checked for us by the "experts," and so we need not approach our reading with healthy skepticism.
Trade journals that present opinion don’t create this false sense of mind-numbing security. Trade journals often publish very useful articles that peer-reviewed journals will not. Meanwhile, countless articles that make their way through peer review should not have.
Trade journals, Dr. DeSantis states, "are about selling products and advertising," which "does not make them a source of continuing education and technique." He adds, "University programs run by specialists ... should be the standard for what information and techniques are implemented in our practices."
While Dr. DeSantis is concerned with the bias of manufacturers, he appears not to have considered the potential bias of academics and specialists. "Publish or perish" is a phrase that echoes in the halls of academia, where researchers know that "a drug is a substance which, when injected into a rat, produces a scientific paper."
Meanwhile, specialists ostracize those in their ranks who share technique with generalists. Moreover, specialists, having mastered their technique, often are not especially interested in improving it. Many specialists in academia don’t practice at all.
As an endodontic resident, I was witness to research undertaken to "justify the existence of the specialty" rather than to improve the care we offer to patients. Academics were slow to embrace rotary endodontic instrumentation, a revolution in patient care that, like most such innovations, resulted from the efforts of entrepreneurs and manufacturers and not academics.
Dr. DeSantis complains that some authors in the trade journals are "representatives of the manufacturers whose materials and techniques they tout." Oddly, while he singles out JADA for praise, there is an advertisement on the very same page on which his letter is published. Elsewhere in this same issue, there is an article by the co-founders of a dental manufacturer reporting favorably on one of their company’s products.
Like Dr. DeSantis, I enjoy JADA and depend on it for relevant information. I don’t feel that accepting advertising or publishing manufacturer-supported research preclude JADA’s usefulness. Perhaps some think that we’d be best served by a single dental journal and centralized planning of dental manufacturing. I’m convinced, however, that the state of our profession compares favorably to that of any other country in the world. There is no crisis.
If you were trapped on a desert island and could receive only one journal to stay abreast of the latest advances in dentistry, which would you choose: a peer-reviewed journal or a trade journal? The great news is that in this country, you don’t have to choose just one. You can read both and use your well-trained mind to make decisions on your own.
Say no to censorship and welcome the contributions of all. Let’s not try to filter ideas until they are safe for dentists; let’s encourage dentists to be their own best filters. I’d be willing to bet that there is a direct correlation between the number of dental trade journals in a country and the quality of the dentistry performed there.
