“An important point to reiterate here is that the emphasis in the dental application of cranial osteopathy is not merely to treat illness or facilitate the flow of the CSF as in “regular” osteopathy; it claims to actually bodily move the facial and cranial bones to more ideal positions to improve orthodontic and TMD outcomes…For Cranial Osteopathy to be viable treatment, there needs to be good evidence anatomically and histologically that the sutures are indeed movable (by hand, no less) to a significant degree, and evidence that doing so is therapeutically beneficial. Neither appears to exist. Although Cranial Osteopathy can provide a modicum of basic research to support its claims, it falls far short of what is needed to establish a scientific foothold in the dental-medical community. Osteopathic applications are woefully lacking in any substantive research but instead rely on anecdotal evidence as the foundation of its validity and applicability…If there’s harm in the Cranio-dental movement, besides a lot of money wasted by dentists on dubious courses and by patients on dubious treatment, it may be that it seems to be a particularly attractive gateway to more bizarre alternate treatment philosophies – one that seems to appeal to surprisingly smart and educated dentists. By granting dentists a license to practice, the public trusts us to apply evidential knowledge to the management of their dental problems. This implies that we must critically examine new hypotheses, decide if there is rational evidence for them, reject the pseudo-science, and apply the knowledge that sifts through for the benefit of the patients we serve.” Grant Ritchey, Science Based Medicine (17th October 2011)