Concepts Editorial: Who Owns Knowledge?

Editorial:

For those of you who have been practicing in the area of craniofacial pain and temporomandibular disorders for as many years as I have, I’ll wager that you have accumulated a library of texts that fills at least one wall of your office. With each new addition to the body of literature, we spend our nights and weekends reading and studying every detail of its contents.
It is impossible to calculate the number of hours we have spent digesting the plethora of peer reviewed papers that have been printed over the years in the many journals, including this excellent publication. We have devoted years of our lives to seminars, learning at the feet of the masters who came before us. Names like Bell, Haden, Stack, Gelb, Neff, Guichet, Dawson, Farrar, Jankelson, and so many more are as familiar to us as are the names of our own family members.
Many of us who practice in this arena have committed ourselves to passing on this vast storehouse of knowledge and experience to others. When we do so, we stand on the shoulders of our mentors. We are a fusion of all those who have come before us and from whom we have had the honor to learn and hone our skills.
If we were asked at exactly what point we learned of MPD, trigeminal neuralgia, how to fabricate an orthotic, or what modalities to employ, we would be hard put to answer. If we were asked which expert, text, or article first opened our mind to a particular concept, we probably would not be able to remember precisely.
Why? Knowledge is an evolutionary process, not a point in history. Knowledge is an amalgamation
of all that we have seen, experienced, studied, and deduced. It is the accumulation of who and what we are.  
At a time when branding has become the norm in product marketing, there are some who attempt to do the same with knowledge. This is my system, my method, or my idea. 
Is this truly so? Or is it a system that is founded on the works of others; an inevitable evolutionary step in the methodology; or a new twist on an existing idea?
I can not imagine how it could be anything else. How can any clinician sit at this point in history–with the vast body of knowledge that has been accumulated by others thus far–and believe that they have something so unique that it must be protected by a copyright or patent? This might very well hold true for a new technological innovation, a device or instrument that is so revolutionary that there is no precedent for it, but for nuances on existing ideas or variations on systems of patient care?
Each of us must decide for ourselves and our good conscience.
I, for example, learned of a phonetically positioned occlusal registration in the late 70’s from Robert Ricketts. I attempt to pass this concept along to my students. I do it slightly differently that Bob but does that make it a Murphy Appliance? Heck No! It’s a Ricketts appliance. I learned of orthopedic repositioning from William Farrar. I don’t make my appliances exactly like Bill, but it is still his concept and it is a Farrar type appliance. I learned of MPD and the basic concepts of spray and stretch from Janet Travell. I teach it in a slightly different manner. Does that mean that my name should be on it? Again–and please excuse my redundancy–the answer is No! Janet Travell is the person that taught us all about these important concepts. I am simply her student continuing where she left off.
When I was presented the honor to act as director of the American Academy of Craniofacial Pain Mini Residency, I sat down and developed an algorithm with which to teach. I did not place my name on it. Why, you ask? The answer is simple, because to my system of ethics, that would have been intellectual fraud. The layout might have been of my design but the material presented was what I had learned from a generation of giants who came before me.
Sometimes it is easy for our ego to outwit our intelligence. We attempt to brand to satisfy our need for fame, and more often, fortune. There are those who feel the necessity to place their name on something because of a subtle revision to a preexisting concept, area of knowledge or experience. This editor feels that this is professional and intellectual dishonesty. Anyone who currently practices or teaches in this arena is only as good as the mentors from whom they have learned. There is little new under the Sun. Most of what we know is simply the modifications of what has come before or the inevitable evolutionary byproduct of previously existing concepts.
No one owns knowledge. It is a treasure to be shared and passed on to the next generation. With each generation, the body of knowledge will grow and the ability to help and better serve our patients will increase.
Dr. Jamison Spencer whimsically and sarcastically quips to lecture audiences about his own appliance, the "Spencer Bilaterally Indexed Gnatholigical Early Guidance Orthotic," otherwise known as the “BIG EGO” Appliance. Let us not allow ourselves to fall into the trap of believing that we have developed our own big ego appliance, techniques, or systems. To do so is a grave disservice to those rare individuals who, from time to time, do indeed bring revolutionary thought to our chosen field.