My dentist consistently knows whether I’ve been brushing much or not, and when he does a cleaning it hurts a lot more if I haven’t been doing it much. Also, after four or five days of not brushing my gums start to hurt, and they feel a lot better after brushing. That of course is consistent with e.g. the fact that you start to itch if you don’t wash other parts of your body and so on. So that seems like good evidence that brushing is at least as useful as washing in general, even if it is only anecdotal insofar as that is my personal experience.
Dentists ability to predict whether you brush or not isn’t evidence that brushing is better than not brushing at reducing undesirable outcomes, unless the undesirable outcome for you is your dentists chastising, rather than a negative health state
My dentist consistently knows whether I’ve been brushing much or not, and when he does a cleaning it hurts a lot more if I haven’t been doing it much. Also, after four or five days of not brushing my gums start to hurt, and they feel a lot better after brushing. That of course is consistent with e.g. the fact that you start to itch if you don’t wash other parts of your body and so on. So that seems like good evidence that brushing is at least as useful as washing in general, even if it is only anecdotal insofar as that is my personal experience.
Dentists ability to predict whether you brush or not isn’t evidence that brushing is better than not brushing at reducing undesirable outcomes, unless the undesirable outcome for you is your dentists chastising, rather than a negative health state