Is it doctor surveys or something?
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It can mean anything that they think they can get away with. A common technique is to see if unions or other organizations that is authorized to represent the workers have issued any recomendations for products. For example dentist unions are all recomending any toothpaste with fluor. As this is currently all major toothpastes everyone can market their product as being recomended by most dentists.
There is a legal term called “puffery”. Puffery refers to advertising words that appear to be making a true or false statement despite the fact that they’re not.
So lets take the claim “9 out of 10 dentists recommend our toothpaste.” At first glance that appears to be a statement that is either true or false – if 9 out of 10 dentists do recommend that toothpaste then its true, if not then its false.
But how do you prove that statement to be true or false? It doesn’t tell you anything about those dentists – is it 90% of all dentists? 9 out of *the* 10 dentists who live on Dentist Street in Los Angeles California? And do these dentists recommend the toothpaste under all circumstances? Do they recommend using it over another toothpaste? Or do they just recommend using toothpaste in general, including both the one being advertised and its competitor?
It turns out that the statement “9 out of 10 dentists recommend our toothpaste” is so vague that its impossible to prove whether it is true or false. In fact, it is likely to be both true and false at the same time.
Statements like that are puffery and advertisers are allowed to use them despite not having anything to back them up, so long as the product is fit for the purpose for which it is being advertised.
it actually has no deeper meaning than “we found someone who is a doctor and who said our product isn’t harmful”.
to my understanding this is usually done by sending a checklist to dentist/doctor with a question like “which of the following products could be used to treat XYZ, please check all that apply”.
and if yours is amongst the dozen or so products the person checkmarks, then you can claim it’s doctor-recommended.
it doesn’t mean your product is actually good at it and if you asked the dentist/doctor “would you recommend this product over its competitors” the answer might very well be “hell no, the others are much better”.
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