Opinions

Do not think of knocking out another person’s brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago.

HORACE MANN, Thought

It’s always a risk to accept the challenge of predicting possible futures.

The last time I gave a version of the “Dentistry 2026” presentation for Practice Plan, a Facebook cynic commented “so if he can predict the future, how come he is still working?”

Another critic complained that “people like me” give these presentations simply to promote our own businesses (I think they call this a TRADE show?).

This month’s crop of comments on my ball-gazing have so far been intelligent and respectful but I’ll be repeating the gig at 16:30 today to (probably) a bigger audience, so there’s still time for some virtual rotten tomatoes to fly across the room.

Last year I gave a keynote presentation at the Clinical Innovations Conference and looked back at 10 predictions I made about the future of dentistry in 2007.

4/10 – completely incorrect

2/10 – half-right

4/10 – completely accurate

One of yesterday’s commentators said “if you say enough things, some of them are bound to be right”.

The stats would seem to support that.

So once again today I’ll be making 10 Bold, Outrageous and Provocative predictions.

Chances are that 4 of them will be accurate.

The problem is which 4?

I haven’t a clue.