Joaquin Berron: Incompetent Mexican Dentist and a crook

                   Joaquin Berron: Mexican Dentist who is Incompetent and a Crook

Joaquin Berron is a Mexican dentist who is incompetent and an outrageous crook.

Joaquin Berron owns a clinic in Cancun, Mexico, Dentaris,  that is a well oiled machine to deprive customers of their money and provide incompetent services related to dentist treatments. Te dentist also has a website called Dental Tourism.

The first thing they do is to do a bait and switch. That is, Alexandra, the office manage will send you a price list for options for implants and denture types. She will offer a very low price, for one set of implants and a second one for a little higher price, and then one where the price will almost double; despite what you want, the crooked dentist will talk you into the higher priced one as the best solution or claim the more expensive one was necessary before the less expensive choice could be put in. In the meantime, Alex has not even supplied the customer with a complete price list for the lower prices; she will later say that she is terrible at sending out prices as an excuse. 

1. Went to Cancun in March, 2014, and got caught in the scam. Dentist Berron took a CT scan to see where to put the implants, and ended up being totally incompetent when he did put them in. He placed the two right implants so close together that they are difficult to be cleaned effectively they should have been at least 3 mm apart but were only 1.5. mm.

(2) He put the two extreme left and right implants in at an angle that is contrary to all other dentists who angle implants. Berron’s claim was that he wanted to avoid the mental nerve, but real prosthodontists, oral surgeons and periodontists have said the angle is going the wrong way and they had never seen anything like this. The consensus is the right implants will fail because of the closeness of the implants. 

(3) The dentist was so incompetent that when he tried to solder the band that would connect the implants together, he fused the abutment with his soldering iron and the left most implant was not connected and created a lump in my jaw. 

(4) The temporary denture he put in cost a thousand dollars, and was so short that I could not eat for four months without extreme discomfort. The gums on both sides of the jaw were exposed and had to chew often on the gums. Welding with a soldering iron is old technology, another problem with this dentist; Americans and most other dentists would have used lasers to do the connecting.

(5) As the dentist admits, in an email to me, 9 days after the implants were done that an infection was likely to have been installed along with the implants. He gave me a 15 days supply of Clindamycin that he called a stronger antibiotic than Amoxicillin, but it is not. It is used for people who are allergic to penicillin, and no stronger than Amoxicillin, and according to my doctor, as opposed to dentist Berron, is weaker. It is always better to check a dentist’s prescription with a doctor who knows much more about drugs and their interactions.

(6) I returned to Cancun in July 2014, to have the denture put in. Because of the incompetent way dentist Berron did the procedures, I had to change to  a bar and over denture because the short denture was so terrible. The Bar and Denture were much cheaper in the initial price list, but the dentist charged me the price for the more expensive denture even when I did not get it. That is to say,, he did a bait and switch, was too incompetent to carry out the job but charged me for a “success” with the flawed denture and procedures that he charged $2500 for but were useless. Most of what he did now have to be removed.

(7) When I returned on july 22nd for my first visit the dentist did not even do a simple probe to check the implant for infection although I had had one immediately after the implants were put in that he had treated me for. Neither did he take a panoramic x-ray to check th implants. He later said he knew they were o.k because they did not move.

(8) After realizing I was the victim of a bait and switch scam on July 25, the last day I went to the dentist, I complained about being charged for something I did not get, but the Office Manager, said those were the correct charges.

(9) After thinking about the entire process a day or so later, I told the dentist I would not have anything more to do with him in Cancun, but would detail my complaints when i returned to the U.S. It did not work out that way because the dentist emailed me and we had an exchange where he tried to get me to take a panoramic x-ray but I declined, pointing out that it was now too late since I already had the bar and denture.

(10) After consulting U.S. dentists and saws what a botched job dentist Berron had done, and that I continued to have an infection in the left implant,I disputed the credit card payment. In his reply to Chase, the dentist contended that he had taken a x-ray in July and everything was o.k. and the work a success. This was a total fabrication and a cover up that the credit card accepted without doing an investigation to determine what actually happened. I have several emails from Berron showing the x-ray was never taken. What he and Alex did was to relabel the x-ray taken in March as one taken in July, a total scam.

(11) Crooked Dentist Berron also contended that I had been so satisfied with the success that I cancelled the last appointment; I did cancel it, but because I had discovered he was a crook, and on investigation late on that he was incompetent. But he seems to have forgotten the emails I wrote about the flawed procedures, not just in July but  as far back as in April when I reported the problems. with the denture. He called me a senile old man who had changed his mind about the success of his work.

(12) When i said Dentaris and Berron had a well oiled machine for scamming people, I mentioned his Office manager, Alexandra. She seems on the surface to be a real person with interest in doing a good job; she is very friendly and helpful, but this is part of the act. She was fully aware of the email exchange in July where I refused to fall for th scam of taking a x-ray that could then be altered because the dentist had sent her copies of the emails at the time. She has t go along with the dentist to keep her job, evidently, but she is just as willing to lie as he is.

The result is I am going to lose the left implant because of the infection; there is no way to save it even with periodontal treatment, and the right extreme implant has to come out as well. I will then have t have a locator denture placed o the remaining two middle implants at a cost of several thousand more dollars. I will have ended up paying around $20,000 for a denture I could have gotten for a fraction of that price in the U.S. and not gone through a year or more of pain and adverse consequences. Before you go to Cancun or to any Mexican dentist, be exceedingly careful because you cannot trust many of them, and credit card companies are never going to help you retrieve your money, and here is no accountability in Mexico; the lawless and corruption is not confined to politicians, and police , but permeates the entire culture and dentists  such as Berron are in the forefront of successfully carrying out a pervasive scam, and covering it up.

Pass this post along to as many people as yo can you might be considering a dental tourism vacation; it might end up being a dental tourist scam!

Two minute Predictor of Senate Elections, 2014

No need for "modeling" gobbledygook of aggregating polls, including variables or the other pomposity "modelers" do . State, Political Culture, Bit of History and you are finished within two minutes and you will do as well as Nate Silver, Sam Wang and a whole host of pompous  other people who make the simple complex for their own benefit.

Republican control of Senate in 9 easy predictions. No complexity or "magic sauce" needed.

Arkansas, Republican 2014 Backward Southern State with too many dumb people to be rational

Alaska, Republican 2014. Reactionary state that elected blooming idiot will always elect reactionaries.

Colorado, Republican 2014. Terrible waste from a state with a possibility of continuing to emerge from the dark ages but not yet.

Iowa, Republican 2014. Back to reactionary status after having one of the best senators for years. Any state with a senator as dumb as Grassley is likely to choose reactionaries eventually.

Louisiana, Republican 2014. Good riddance for a not so Democratic cipher.

Montana, Republican. Another Democratic cipher is gone and do not need another one for the long run.

South Dakota, Republican 2014. Who really cares?

West Virginia, Republican 2014. Country is better off without having to depend on West Virginia senator to do the rational Democratic thing. Give them enough guns and they will probably shoot each other.

Kansas, Republican 2014. We would be disappointed if Kansas ever showed any half-way good sense.

Democratic Party will have a chance to be a progressive force for change eventually when th party sheds the reactionary South ciphers that have held them back. Whether the party will eventually take advantage is up for grabs, but have the best chance since th e1930s to move the country forward. 

Modeling Predictions and Pomposity of People Such as Nate Silver, Sam Wang and others.

The proliferation of prediction “models” is another indication of the absurdity of the 24 hour “news” cycle. There are numerous sites making predictions about the senate races and control of that body, but the question is: what is the worth of these predictions? In my view, they are absolutely worthless and a frivolous distraction. What, one might ask, is the basis for such a view?

1. The prediction “models”  are based on poll numbers and the assumption of people such as Nate Silver that the majority of anything is better than individual positions. Silver makes this assertion in his book, and it is totally absurd. To take two current examples, we would be in imminent threat of attack from IS and we are all going to get Ebola. A longer term conclusion is there is a god who answers individual and group prayers.

2. The predictions all are based on the assumption that by taking the mean of polls,one is correcting for bad polls or ones that are inaccurate. Silver once tried to determine the worth of a poll’s accuracy but do not know if this is still true. Sam Wang is a far more sophisticated predictor and he uses the median rather than the mean, and this is in keeping with social science levels of measurement that is sometimes violated.

3. For hundreds of years, individuals and groups have tried to use arithmetic, statistical or math to make predictions and most fail if they go beyond basic statistics. The absurdity of economics and the “models” were shown in the recession, near depression of recent years. There are patterns to be explored, but there are no universal mathematical patterns that the social sciences have that can allow for cardinal rather than ordinal measures. 

4. There are interesting patterns, to be sure, that war worth exploring in politics and society, but once there are attempts to present elaborate mathematical formulas, the information becomes trivial or silly. I refer you to an article in the American Political Science Review of February 2010 or 2011, on the impact of changing precincts and voter turnout. Aside from a conclusion that a change of voting precincts by 8 tenths of a mile affected voting, the other ‘astounding’ CONCLUSION was that voting was related to party affiliation. It was article such as this one that had been funded by National Science Foundation that led congress to pass a law that prohibited Political Scientists from receiving NSF grants, and Obama signed it. I would like to see a similar law that would prohibit aggregating poll information or using it to make predictions, but that is not likely to happen. It was amusing to read that people  were rushing to read Nate Silver in the 2012 presidential election to see if Obama was going to win. But mass media leads penetration of everything leads to such absurd and irrational behavior. 

I mentioned Sam Wang’s use of the median as an improvement over Silver’s, and others, use of the mean in aggregating polls. Some predictors, I have read, have dispensed with the pompous claim—by the predictor or others—that there is some kind of “magic sauce” in predictions. By simply taking the mean of polls the predictions were as good as the more pompous, and commercial, "Model" builders with their many variable, but opaque, models. These predictions seemed to work as well as the “models’ that are constructed that run thousands of simulations. Sam Wang derides, justly so, the pompous claims about the magic sauce. Polls, he has noted, might do just as well in predicting the outcome of the senate races this year as the “models”. He, or others have noted as well, that Nate Silver made two predictions in recent years about senate races that were wrong, whereas Wang was correct. Despite Wang’s more rational analysis, and better than Silver’s as others have pointed out, I still do not have any confidence that he is any better than pollsters or astute observers  in predicting the 2014 senate results, or that can be done for the Senate this year by a two hour only work on prediction..

5. Much of the “new modeling” is hardly of a type unique to the present. I once read a 1627 book in the Cambridge University library  called Political Arithmetic and I am sure a search would find something even early based on the same theme, not to mention Plat’s Republic that seems to have the same idea in mind. There is also the widespread linking of presidential popularity with party losses. But there is a failure to tell the populace that since the Civl war, their have been fewer than 5 times where the presidential party in power did not lose seats even in the House of Representatives in off year elections, even when the president was extremely popular. Bill Clinton bucked the trend in 1998 which cost Newt his job. George W. Bush also had one off year election where he did not lose seats in the house. The same pattern has not been evident in the Senate. The new buzz word is also “wave” but V.O Key, a political scientist. Noted in the 1940s that sometimes an election resulted in a sweep by one party or the other. With regard to presidential popularity and loss of seats, Truman was very unpopular in 1948, but still won and so did the Democrats for congress. In 1954 and thereafter, regardless of his popularity, Ike lost seats in both the House and Senate, allowing the Democrats to take control of both houses of Congress again and control they did not give up until 40 years later in the House and 1980 in the Senate. The 1986 Senate races are also instructive in presidential popularity and loss of seats. Ronald Reagan was extremely popular president but in 86, he lost 8 seats in the Senate—a wave before the term was introduced I think and he never helped the Republicans take control of the House. 

6. What about 2014? Every one who looks at any media knows the Democrats are going to lose Senate seats in West Virginia, South Dakota and Montana, and are likely to lose in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alaska so without going through all the gobbledegook of the pompous predictors, you could very well do your own self prediction that Democrats will lose control of the Senate. Maybe, to add a bit of complications but not much, the independent could win in Kansas, and the Democrats will lose in Iowa and/or Colorado, so you still have Republicans winning 7 seats and control. And you would be just as likely to be correct as Nate Silver and all the rest of the  pomposity people with so called “magic sauce”. 

7. The point is it is pretty much an exercise in taking standard information, looking a bit rationally at political culture and you have saved yourself the lab--and tedium—of following all the percentages of this and of that or Mr. percentage this versus percentage that. And you will have to spend about an hour typing up the results. 

8. And we hardly need to be told again about the importance of turn out by parties. Robert Lane, another political scientist, long ago noted that with a different fur out, policy choices by politicians would be entirely different, and we all know that by now.

8. So, no percentages of likelihood of this or that are needed,  my prediction: Republicans will control the Senate with one or two people to spare.