Why do continuing dental education courses perpetuate the credentials-attract-patients myth? Because their economic model depends on it. CE course providers fill their classrooms with paying doctors. If course instructors openly acknowledged that the techniques being taught would not translate into routine practice use without parallel investment in marketing and selling systems, enrollment would collapse. The honest disclosure would force prospective attendees to confront the question of whether they actually have the patient pipeline to use what they are about to learn. Most attendees do not. They are taking the course on the implicit assumption that the credential plus the technique will [...]