Editorial
Life long learning in a world of globalized knowledge
Jean-François Roulet DDS , PhD , Prof hc
Professor University of Florida , Gainesville , FL , USA
Dear Readers , We live in a world that is dramatically different from the world I was born into more than 65 years ago . When I was a student , my main source of information was textbooks . As a young researcher I learned that journals are the source of the most recent advances in my profession . The library was the location where every project started : search the literature . For information on the daily life we usually relied on the local newspaper . Today everything is different . We not only produce much more information and renew knowledge on a much faster pace , but due to the internet , information becomes globally available usually a short time after it happened . If I want to go to the movies , I just consult a local website , where all the movie programs of the week are listed . I can even buy the tickets right away and select my favorite seats . At home in Gainesville , Florida I watch the Swiss TV news and I am informed about a flood that happened a few hours before in the area I used to live . If I want to know something , a scientific fact or something about a person , I just access the internet , log in to a known search engine and within seconds I have a multitude of information . So someone should think that life long learning has become very easy and that we are moving to a totally informed society . Unfortunately the contrary is happening . It has become much more difficult to be informed , not only because we are almost drowning in the sea of information , but also because there is a problem related to the validity / truthfulness of the information . You can see this , if you search a topic you are very familiar with . I just tested this again on May 3rd 2016 by looking up “ amalgam ” on a very well known search engine . The result : 8,700,000 hits in 0.41 seconds – impressive , but how to digest that huge amount of information – impossible . So , as everybody would probably do it , I start to look into the first hit : there I find quite a neutral description of what amalgam is , however with quite some inaccuracies . Furthermore the concerns of the group of people that believe that amalgam is toxic and dangerous for the patient and the dentist ’ s health are reported without validation . I personally know that , based on solid research , these concerns can clearly be reduced to a risk which is much smaller than taking an aspirin against a headache . Two entries down the road I find an link offered by a tooth paste producer “ Dental Amalgam : A Health Risk ”. There Amalgam and its toxicity is explained in lay terms quite reasonably , but not without errors . And finally amalgam entry # 9 is called “ Dental Amalgam Mercury Solutions ” which is the view of the hard core anti amalgam fraction , naming all the false arguments to make you believe that amalgam is a serious and deadly health risk …. I could tell exactly the same story about fluoride ( 20,000,000 hits with much more vigorous and contradictory argumentation ; the internet offers automatically as search keywords “ fluoride dangers , fluoride conspiracy , fluoride side effects and fluoride in water ”) or any other topic I consider myself competent about . So how should a consumer know which source to trust ? My answer as an editor is clear and loud : “ read a peer reviewed scientific journal !” Andreas Linde , the Editor of the Scandinavian Journal of Dental Research once said : “ Nothing is scientifically “ shown ” or “ proven ” before it has been published in a scientific journal with a peer review system , so one can critically judge what was done , how it was done and evaluate how solid it is .” How is this accomplished ? Every peer reviewed journal usually has a