Sir, the BDJ could easily contribute to the body of evidence, currently sparse, on the effect of CPD delivery on dentists' level of knowledge.

If the CPD programme in its present form was altered, simply by publishing in a similar format, the questions for the relevant article prior to the issue containing the educational information, then if scored similarly to the current scoring system, this baseline could be compared to the scores obtained for same questions after the relevant articles were published.

It would be interesting to observe any drop in the number of 100% scores that may or may not result.

Then we could start thinking about how new knowledge, if it is proven, impacts on practice.

Professor Andrew Eder, Director of Eastman CPD and Dr Maurice Faigenblum, Lead for the BDJ Eastman CPD Programme, responds: Eastman CPD were delighted to receive your helpful comments. However, in the current design of the programme, many of the questions are article specific so it would not always be appropriate to publish the questions in advance as they may be taken out of context.

One of our colleagues at the Eastman Dental Institute has recently undertaken a study involving 400 of the 7,000 registered users of the BDJ Eastman CPD programme.

Some of the findings address the issues you have raised and it is intended that this data will be published shortly.

In the meantime, please rest assured that the programme is reviewed regularly with the BDJ and Nature Publishing and your comments will be considered further in this forum.