Comment by cowlby
6 days ago
This is where o3 shines for me. Since it does iterations of thinking/searching/analyzing and is instructed to provide citations, it really limits the hallucination effect.
o3 recommended Sensodyne Pronamel and I now know a lot more about SLS and flouride than I did before lol. From its findings:
"Unlike other toothpastes, Pronamel does not contain sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS), which is a common foaming agent. Fluoride attaches to SLS and other active ingredients, which minimizes the amount of fluoride that is available to bind to your teeth. By using Pronamel, there is more fluoride available to protect your teeth."
That is impressive, but it also looks likely to be misinformation. SLS isn't a chelator (as the quote appears to suggest). The concern is apparently that it might compete with NaF for sites to interact with the enamel. However, there is minimal research on the topic and what does exist (at least what I was quickly able to find via pubmed) appears preliminary at best. It also implicates all surfactants, not just SLS.
This diversion highlights one of the primary dangers of LLMs which is that it takes a lot longer to investigate potential bullshit than it does to spew it (particularly if the entity spewing it is a computer).
That said, I did learn something. Apparently it might be a good idea to prerinse with a calcium lactate solution prior to a NaF solution, and to verify that the NaF mouthwash is free of surfactants. But again, both of those points are preliminary research grade at best.
If you take anything away from this, I hope it's that you shouldn't trust any LLM output on technical topics that you haven't taken the time to manually verify in full.
Very interesting. It grabbed that from the marketing at ahttps://www.pronamel.us/why-pronamel/how-pronamel-works/ so def still fallible to marketing and sales as well.