Category: Book Review
Periodontology – The Essentials
The second edition of my textbook on periodontology is now available. The text has evolved from a popular script for undergraduate students in the 1990s at Heidelberg University. Three very successful German editions (2001, 2006, and 2012) have been published by Thieme, and I am glad and grateful that my publisher has provided me with an opportunity to largely update the English version of 2005 now as well.
As a new feature quality of evidence from an ever increasing number of systematic reviews has been carefully assessed and, in part, summarized in evidence boxes. Several chapters have been largely expanded if not rewritten, for instance those on periodontal microbiology, pathogenesis of biofilm-induced periodontal diseases, epidemiology of periodontal diseases, general medical considerations, and medication and supplements.
From Science Fiction Back to Reality?
I vividly remember a particular oral examination in Kuwait when the external examiner, a professor from Sweden, had not shown and I and then chairman of the surgical department, Tryggve Lie from Norway, had to quiz the bright candidate by ourself. It was quite an inspired exam, much about figuring out whether deeper understanding of underlying biological mechanisms of pathogenesis and healing of periodontal disease was present or not [1].
When we discussed periodontal regeneration, I asked the candidate at one point whether she could recall the cover of the new edition (the fourth, of 2003) of what is still referred to as Lindhe’s textbook. No, she said but we had a copy at hand. It had actually puzzled me for some time, in particular as the authors had not mentioned their source. It apparently showed a histological section of an implant which was in touch with two remaining roots. On page 658, in chapter 28 on Regenerative Periodontal Therapy, the image appears again. The legend tells,
Fig. 28-13. Microphotograph of a titanium implant placed in contact with retained root tips (a). A distinct cementum layer (arrows) and periodontal ligament (PL) in continuity with that on the roots (R) is visible on the implant surface.
On Arrogating Intellectual Property
Colleagues, PhD and master’s students alike may pay some attention to the following. I had just come across of publisher Springer’s announcement of former colleague Alexandrina L. Dumitrescu’s latest book “Understanding Periodontal Research”, see here. The book has yet not been published but it is assumed that it will be available in the end of November. A link by Springer leads to a chapter on “Multilevel Modelling in Periodontal Research.” As the “Abstract” tells,
“Periodontal data are usually plentiful observations made in one oral cavity. In order to describe the periodontal situation, sites (gingival units) around teeth within patients or subjects are considered by using several variables. Observations may be even repeated in a longitudinal way. This is a typical hierarchical situation with lower and upper levels.”
As some readers may know, I had dedicated considerable time and effort in the past ten years to multilevel modeling of site-specific data in periodontal research which has resulted in so far 13 scientific papers and quite a number of conference abstracts on the topic. On my Institute’s webpage, I have had announced years ago,
“I am pretty much convinced that site-specific clinical observations are most valuable and of utmost importance in the understanding of periodontal diseases. Unfortunately, in recent years, these observations have frequently been summarized at the subject level. While doing so, much of the collected information is lost. Since site-specific analysis of periodontal data may yield an amazing deal of new information regarding the pathogenesis of periodontal disease, I would invite anybody who owns site-specific data, which has been conventionally analyzed before with the subject as statistical unit, to share his/her data in order to do a correct, i.e., multilevel analysis.”
Well, Springer’s “Abstract” of Dr. Dumitrescu’s chapter (without quotation) sounded quite familiar to me. It took not too long that I found the article of which these sentences had been borrowed. In 2008, I had written a brief tutorial on “Dealing with hierarchical data in periodontal research” which had been published in Springer’s dental journal Clinical Oral Investigations [1]. I next googled these four sentences and immediately found most pages of the respective chapter on Multilevel Modelling in Periodontal Research at GoogleBooks. My four sentences in question were not an abstract. They were rather necessary part of an introduction which leads to the formulation of the aim of the paper, namely how to deal with hierarchical data in periodontal research (I will turn to that below). Well, Dr. Dumitrescu’s used them out of context, verbatim, as her Introduction (with no further ado) to the chapter (p. 297), though with a correct reference to my original article, Müller (2009). What is missing here are the quotation marks [2].
Copy and Paste
Now I became really interested. GoogleBooks not only provides most of the multilevel modeling chapter but many more pages of the whole, yet not published, book. My very first impression (well, hypothesis) was that Dr. Dumitrescu had copied and pasted all sentences, even paragraphs, conclusions, pictures and tables from other sources, without bothering of timely interpretation or any further intellectual input, just quoting her sources but not using quotation marks. It is tempting to test this hypothesis but, since GoogleBooks does not allow printing out the pages which are displayed by permission of the copyright owner Springer, this is going to be cumbersome (I had meanwhile contacted Springer for the original manuscript).
Periodontology 