That there’s always one dentist, out of five, who doesn’t support a certain type of oral hygiene product?

Indubitably!

You hear it everywhere. “Four out Five dentists recommend (insert dental product brand mane here).”

In fact, the chewing gum company Trident initiated a campaign in the mid-60’s that claimed this fact to be true of their sugarless chewing gum. Since then, a weirdly copious number of dental products have also attested to this fact, including Colgate, Crest, Listerine, and many others.

First of all, how is this possible? There are only so many dentists in the world. Scratch that. If 80% of Dentist’s agree to support a certain type of a certain product, how can they also agree to support a competing product within the same market? It seems weird that the entire demographic of dental hygienists could be so wishy-washy.

Yeah, that seems too weird. Perhaps I should give all of these companies a bit more credit.

Maybe each of them only surveyed five dentists! If this were the case, than all of them could possibly be telling the truth.

But if this were the case, it was also be absurdly weird that each multi-billion dollar corporation chose to resourcefully interview a grand total of five people. After all, any statistician knows that five is far below the appropriate sample size to yield statistically significant results.

And, what possesses either the 20% or the single dentist to consistently dissent? Is he/she that disagreeable? Does this dentist really take so much pride in his/her opinion so as to avoid submitting to any popular belief? Who knows! I mean really, if four of the five dentists agree that it’s a good product, then it must be pretty darn good. Perhaps this fifth dentist just isn’t quite as educated as the other four. Or maybe, even more terrifying, this dentist possesses a bank of secret knowledge that could change the face of oral hygiene for eternity, and isn’t sharing it.

Perhaps in the world of dental hygiene 100% doesn’t cover the entire dentist demographic. Perhaps 160% is needed to fully encompass the entire population of dentists. While a weird postulation, this could perhaps explain why 4 out of 5 dentists can both support Crest and Colgate, completely oppositional products.

This is all weird speculation to a weird fact, mind you, but it certainly is worth pondering. Until next time, rest in piece knowing that, whatever dental product you use, chances are, four out of five dentists agree with your decision!