Extract

“Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired”1

I thank you for the opportunity to respond to Dr Swanson’s letter.2 It is the second time that I have had to take my pen to paper to answer a range of allegations and recriminations from him.3 After years in private practice, he has more recently emerged as a frequent commentator of evidence-based practice,4 the dangers of overcommercialisation in plastic surgery5 (which I must admit I agree with), and allegations of industry involvement corrupting the truth in research.6 It is easy to throw stones but they will fall short of the mark if you are not speaking from a position of scientific and/or professional credibility.

In summary, here are the allegations and assertions he has raised in his letter.

I will now go through each of these and attempt to provide supporting arguments and published evidence as a contrary view to the one he has written. I make no apology in going through this in detail because as you will see, it is easy to skim through the surface of much of this information and form an erroneous opinion. Where relevant, I have included quick fact check boxes (Tables 1-4) to counter some of the glaring inaccuracies.

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