Talk:dentistry

RFV
Our current definition says: "(uncountable) Operations performed on teeth by dentists, such as drilling teeth, filling cavities, and placing crowns and bridges." Other dictionaries seem to define dentistry as science. Should we rewrite our definition or perhaps add another sense? --Hekaheka (talk) 04:27, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
 * 1) dictionary.com: "the profession or science dealing with the prevention and treatment of diseases and malformations of the teeth, gums, and oral cavity, and the removal, correction, and replacement of decayed, damaged, or lost parts, including such operations as the filling and crowning of teeth, the straightening of teeth, and the construction of artificial dentures."
 * 2) dictionary.com/Collins: "the branch of medical science concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of diseases and disorders of the teeth and gums"
 * 3) dictionary.com/Medical Dictionary: "The science concerned with the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases of the teeth, gums, and related structures of the mouth and including the repair or replacement of defective teeth."
 * 4) dictionary.com: "The branch of medicine that deals with the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of diseases of the teeth, gums, and other structures of the mouth."
 * 5) The Free Dictionary: "The science concerned with the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of diseases of the teeth, gums, and related structures of the mouth and including the repair or replacement of defective teeth."
 * 6) Wikipedia: "branch of medicine that is involved in the study, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of diseases, disorders and conditions of the oral cavity, maxillofacial area and the adjacent and associated structures and their impact on the human body."
 * 7) Our Appendix:Glossary of dental terms: "The study, diagnosis and treatment of diseases of teeth and surrounding tissues."
 * So, you're disputing both definitions. Are you happy for this entry to be deleted if it's not cited? Mglovesfun (talk) 10:24, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Of course I'm not happy with deletion. I agree that "dentistry" is a word (!) that we should have. That's why this is in RFV. My question is, whether the sense "operations performed by dentist" is a) correct, i.e. actually used, and b) sufficient, as other dictionaries seem to define it differently. --Hekaheka (talk) 11:53, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
 * It actually could be deleted after a month if not cited, especially if we don't consider these definitions 'in clear widespread use' because they're not accurate. It would be a bit of a farce. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:38, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
 * You make me feel that I have done something wrong when I brought up this issue here. --Hekaheka (talk) 15:42, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
 * This seems to me to be as good a forum as any for addressing poor definitions. The one-month pseudo-deadline puts some benign pressure on facing and resolving such problems.
 * MWOnline takes a somewhat different approach to the above: "the art or profession of a dentist" (linked in their entry).
 * As dentistry is derived (synchronically at least) from dentist, it seems proper to push the main burden to [[dentist]].
 * To say that dentistry is a science requires adding a sense that defines it as an engineering discipline or a profession.
 * If someone not schooled in the "science" of dentistry were extracting teeth, filling cavities, and making false teeth, wouldn't en-N speakers still call the practice dentistry?
 * IOW, the "science" definitions all seem like PoV pushing. DCDuring TALK 16:16, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Some more POV pushing is to be found in the names of major institutions in this field: Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, University of Adelaide School of Dentistry and University of Toronto Faculty of Dentistry to name a few. --Hekaheka (talk) 18:23, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, they don't call themselves Schools of Dental Science, just as (most) business schools don't have the gall to claim to teach "business science" or law schools "legal science". If you are saying that dentistry is a field of study, that is as true as saying that hospitality, business, engineering, animal husbandry and forestry are fields of study. There may be something that people call "dental science", but the main meaning of dentistry doesn't seem to me to be that. If we can show that dentistry is used to refer to both the profession or practice and a "science", then we should have two senses. DCDuring TALK 23:55, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Our definitions for engineering and forestry include lines which identify them as fields of study. "Business" doesn't currently have such line, but on the other hand a Google search for "study business" gets 200,000+ hits and "business studies" about 2.4 million. Obviously, a lot of people think that it's a field of study as well. If I recall right, we are interested in the actual usage of words and not so much in their "correctness". --Hekaheka (talk) 07:01, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
 * There are also fields of study like gender studies and refrigeration studies. I doubt that such is justification for adding a "science" sense to either [[gender]] or [[refrigeration]].
 * In any event, citing this definition seems to just mean finding collocations like "practice dentistry" and "dentistry office" and "dentistry on my|your|his|her|their teeth" and similar. DCDuring TALK 13:16, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't find the dated "office" sense to be easy to cite. It isn't easy to find dentistry used to mean dental procedures themselves either. OTOH, it is fairly easy to find "dentistry office" and "practice dentistry". I have added a sense for the practice and profession. I suppose we need only some cites that say, preferrably off-handedly, say that dentistry is a science, rather than advocate that it be called or treated as a science, to support a science sense. DCDuring TALK 13:54, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Please take a look at the second group of citations at Citations:dentistry to see some evidence about how folks use the term science relative to dentistry. I think there is broad agreement that there is science to dentistry, that there is science in dentistry, and that there is a science as well as an art of dentistry. The abundant assertions that dentistry is a science sometimes refer to broader senses of science than may be conveyed by our use of the word in a definition. At other times they seem more rhetorical, either exhortations or claims about the field. It seems almost PoV to use the word. DCDuring TALK 14:40, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Added a citation to show that dentistry (the act of working on teeth, fillings, crowns, etc.) has and is performed by mundane people, not solely by medical/dental professionals. In addition, I have seen numerous examples of people referring to poor dentistry that seem to indicate the result or state of teeth and oral health as opposed to work performed on teeth. I don't know if it is relevant or not, but dentistry is not solely a human profession. There are equine dentists and others who work on horse's teeth who might or might not have any proper training in this scientific field.--Jacecar (talk) 06:04, 4 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I have overhauled the entry, and cited the senses. Take a look. - -sche (discuss) 20:54, 14 October 2012 (UTC)