| Some thoughts after reading the article and browsing through the comments on NYT and here so far: 1. Choosing the angle of emphasising a (fairly recent in origin) connection to a maligned fringe group. Great way to taint a theory and practice that is not the current paradigm, and implicitly associating anyone who takes an interest in it with a community of people few want to be associated with 2. “Many self-identified incels have a highly mechanistic understanding of human relationships and believe they can improve their station in the sexual hierarchy through a practice called ‘looksmaxxing’: enhancing one’s sex appeal through weight lifting, skin and hair treatments, and even plastic surgery” – Try replacing ‘self-identified incels’ with ‘self-identified women’. Hardly controversial that getting in shape and grooming oneself increases one’s chances of finding a romantic partner, even if might be neither sufficient nor necessary. 3. “I already knew how I felt about some of the Mews’ claims – John’s absurd belief, for instance, that unattractive criminals are less likely to reoffend if their faces are made more beautiful” – Ok, so say you have two job applicants for the position you’re trying to fill for a customer-facing job. One applicant, though in all other ways a seemingly good candidate, has terrible teeth - think ‘faces of meth’ bad - the other, equal in all other respects has a mouth full of perfect glistening teeth and a winning smile. Who do you honestly think you’re more likely to pick? If you think the first, you’re most likely fooling yourself, and you’re also not good at your job, being to find the person most suited for interacting with your customers and making them feel at ease. Which of the candidates do you think is more likely to stumble down a path of criminality due to lack of good job opportunities? 4. Yup, the Mews are definitely odd characters, that in no way invalidates their theories, and apart from some representatives of the current paradigm in orthodontics expressing their disdain for the Mews and their theories, there’s no substantial evidence given for why they are so wrong – so wrong as to be villainous in the eyes of their critics it seems. The article ends with a cliff hanger with the perfect teethed skulls of yore. This is in fact very strong evidence that the heredity argument is plainly wrong. To argue that the crooked teeth and underdeveloped mouths that appear quite suddenly in conjunction with the industrial revolution are due to genetics is like ripping off your shirt to show the massive tattoo on your chest that says, “I know nothing about the timescales of evolution” 5. “This emphasis on compliance irks the Mews’ critics almost more than anything, because it allows them to blame their patients for any failures” – replace ‘the Mews’’ with ‘the sports coaches’ and *patients’ with ‘athletes’. All treatments that are not surgical require compliance to some extent to work. Changing your body through behavioural changes is obviously possible, but often requires more diligence and discipline than many are ready for. On a personal level, I fixed a massive overbite and a terrible posture as a teenager by consciously pushing my jaw forward all waking hours and straightening my back and paying attention to my posture while walking and standing. It takes time, but it generally works 6. What is the actual, real scandal exposed in this article? A couple of dentists who believe strongly in a theory and practice based on fairly good evolutionary reasoning and some obviously positive results? The fact that a community of bitter young men who deem themselves undateable and ugly are looking to these dentists ideas to improve aspects of themselves? Or maybe the fact that our current paradigm has no good explanation for why our collective mouths have on average degraded in modernity, and the standard treatments – that are both invasive and painful – apparently don’t fix the underlying problems. 7. From my own experience with everything from teeth issues to asthma, eczema and allergies, I know that the current paradigm of healthcare for all those problems is stuck on a track of symptom suppression via medication, with practitioners in general knowing nothing to very little about how things like breathing, nutrition, gut flora and many other things affect these conditions. Scientific and medical paradigms are always tough to change, and there’s a plethora of examples of mainstream practices and accepted truths that in hindsight appear absurd – such as the belief that hand washing was unnecessary for doctors between attending to patients that was dogma before Semmelweis – that are defended tooth and claw by the establishment, while detractors like Semmelweis are shunned and vilified. 8. Among the comments on NYT and here, many of which gleefully or dramatically jump straight at the incel angle and join in the hate and ridicule chorus (it’s apparently ok to hate and ridicule disillusioned, often autism spectrum young men who can’t find girlfriends. How sweet…), I see comments from dentists and individuals who testify to the problems of the current paradigm, and share stories of positive and negative change that lends credence to the Mews’ theories. How would the comments section have looked with another angle to the article? Are there examples of people who have started practicing these methods and have documented their results? Wouldn’t that be more interesting to look into? Oh well. edit: paragraph separation
edit 2: spell check and specifying comments on NYT and here in point 8 |