Bulletproofing your investigation
By Alex Lubben, New Orleans Health Journalism Fellow
At Health Journalism 2025, CBS News investigative correspondent Anna Werner offered tips for bulletproofing an investigation using one of her stories as an example.
Werner’s investigative story began with clarinetist Boja Kragulj, a successful professional musician who began to experience breathing difficulties that made it harder for her to play. She was told she needed double-jaw surgery. Instead, she turned to the internet, where she discovered a miracle device — the Anterior Growth Guidance Appliance. Its inventor was a Tennessee dentist, Steve Galella, who claimed it could solve all sorts of problems, including sleep apnea. It could even improve users’ facial structure, he said, and make them more attractive.
After using the device for a few months, the clarinetist’s teeth flared outward. They became loose and painful. An orthodontist who later examined her said her case was “the worst thing” he’d ever seen. Kragulj is now unable to play clarinet well enough to perform or teach.
Kragulj and 20 other patients who used the AGGA have filed lawsuits against Galella, the device’s manufacturer, and organizations that train dentists to use it, alleging that they profit from a device that harms users.
Werner said she had been tipped off that there were lawsuits over this device. It had not been approved by the FDA, undergone clinical trials, or been the subject of peer-reviewed studies. Court records said the device had been used on 10,000 people.
Her first tip for bulletproofing an investigation like this: “fact-check, fact-check, and fact-check again.” Keep reviewing facts until it’s absolutely too late to do so again. It’s not uncommon to find a loose fact right before publication, Werner said.
She also recommended talking to as many patients as possible. She and her team spoke to 11 people who had used the device, and attorneys representing 23 others. Through interviews with people affected by the device, not only did she confirm that the device generally harms rather than helps — she also got some great interviews (that, unfortunately, detailed the horrors of using the device).
“One of the women … said she couldn’t kiss her boyfriend because it hurt too much,” Werner said.
Next, she talked to as many experts as she could to independently review her reporting.
She found that the dentist who invented the device had been ordered by a judge to produce five before-and-after patient scans to prove the device works. Werner obtained those scans and sent them to eight experts around the country — at Harvard, Columbia, and other top dental schools. Werner stressed the importance of finding academics with the right expertise.
All of those experts said the device did not work as Galella claimed.
Then, Werner looked for studies. There was one — from a facial surgeon who had seen so many patients affected by the device that he published a study on it. (The study’s author, whom she interviewed, described the AGGA device as “medieval.” Using it to expand one’s jaw, he said, is like trying to make a house bigger by pushing on the wooden framing in the walls.)
Werner also recommended reading court filings. She even read Galella’s divorce filings, just to get a sense of who he was.
As she was wrapping up the investigation, she made repeated attempts to contact Galella — by phone, over email and even in person.
Finally, as she prepared to publish, she asked friends and colleagues to watch a near-final edit of the story, to get feedback from people who weren’t as deep into it as she was.
“Someone who has never seen your story before might catch something,” she said. “Or they might point out something that they didn’t get.”
Alex Lubben is an environment reporter at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans.
