Sir, we read with interest the letter 'Real dentistry amidst the reels' (BDJ 2021; 231: 206-207).A key aspect of social media, as mentioned in the letter, involves professional networking of doctors. This interaction involves digital information sharing, continuing professional development (CPD) programmes, case discussions and analysis, which bring dentists from different parts of the world under one umbrella, for the single purpose of providing better patient care.

We would like to highlight the countless webinars in the past year alone that have provided dentists with a huge platform to share knowledge with others sitting on the other side of the world, mostly free of cost. In addition, many social media online 'groups', especially on Facebook, have been instrumental in disseminating information and knowledge in the past year.

However, there is an issue here. Amongst the genuine scientific webinars, conferences and 'posts', there lie many 'brand-driven', sponsored ones with hidden agendas, promoting products amongst a plethora of social media 'professional' groups. In other words, confirmation bias, where there is a tendency to only consider information that supports one's existing beliefs or theories, seems to run unabated. The absence of a qualified scientific committee in many such social media professionalgroups and conferences may result in inappropriate screening, leading to inexperienced speakers, inadequate quality of attendees and, more importantly, paltry scientific power of lectures.

A usual presenter in such brand-driven conferences appears to have a profile of a clinician talking to their audiences about his or her success in selected cases with untested, filtered experience confined to his or her private practice alone. In other cases, information is broadcast on a personal website or webpages, portraying the owner's opinion, only to be believed by a majority of gullible public as 'hard science'. However, we live in times where testimonials, case reports, lectures by 'clinical experts' given by paid experts, all supplemented with proprietary publications, are seemingly enough for many concepts to be tacitly acceptable. We hope this attitude changes, for the better of our beloved profession.