7 ms·

The most vaccine-hesitant group of all? PhDs

37 points by Vindl 5y ago

mam3 5y ago
Yeah, this is why the pro-vaccine propaganda is insanely condescending: of course we (phd) know that vaccine are efficient to stop the disease, and we are not debating that. In most case we debating the right to refuse it (which is basically not the case anymore for example in france), and also the fact that for many young people, it's close to useless. Useless in the sense that the probability of having severe forms is suuuuuper low, and that the argument of 'limiting the spread to older/weaker people' is not so convincing since on the long term covid will end up spreading to the older/weaker people anyway if themselves don't vaccinate. SO we should focus the effort on convincing older/weaker to vaccinate and leave the Phds/young.
- Traster 5y ago
  The survey this report is based on asked if you would take the vaccine today. Your point about being forced is irrelevant to this question. What it’s finding is people with phds aren’t making that argument - they don’t want to take it themselves. Also you say you know the vaccine is efficient to stop the disease, but it’s close to useless “for many young people” but then you spend a paragraph arguing it isn’t.
  - mam3 5y ago
    No one would take a vaccine which is still expérimental if it was not covid. Especially not the people who dont have consequence of it. Its normal young people dont want it. They only take it because they are forced somehow (mandatory masking and other stuff). The only debate worth it is how much you have to make it mandatory
    - Mordisquitos 5y ago
      > No one would take a vaccine which is still expérimental if it was not covid. While that may sound intuitively true, what does a vaccine "being experimental" actually mean objectively? For a vaccine to be experimental can mean many subtly different things depending on the context, and the currently deployed COVID-19 vaccines are only "experimental" with regards to the legal and customary fictions of the official procedures that are ordinarily in place for novel medications. These procedures have a reason to exist, of course, but they do not determine any objective fact about the reality of our current knowledge about these vaccines. To rest ones trust on these vaccines on them being officially "experimental" or not is to fall into the fallacy of reification.
      - mam3 5y ago
        > These procedures have a reason to exist, of course, but they do not determine any objective fact about the reality of our current knowledge about these vaccines. It's still in phase 2 or 3. it has to be beyond 4. The reason is that indeed, theses rules were put in place because it was "assessed" that this delay was necessary to proprely evaluate thre effects of drugs, based probably on past problems. As such ou "current konwledge about these vaccines" is incomplete
- Mordisquitos 5y ago
  However, in my social circles I have found that more educated people (some with PhDs) are more likely to want to be vaccinated, and less likely to display any hesitancy. Then again, it's not a representative sample as it's mostly people working in science or with PhDs in biology.
- lucozade 5y ago
  > SO we should focus the effort on convincing older/weaker to vaccinate and leave the Phds/young That was a perfectly reasonable argument when vaccine supply was limited and there was a huge number of older/weaker people needing vaccines. And that was, in fact, the approach that almost all countries took at the early stages of vaccine rollout. But it's not a good argument now. At least not in the countries with high uptake. As the vaccines aren't 100% effective, reducing transmissibility will save lives. Still. And it is absolutely true that the young are much less likely to get severely affected from catching COVID. And that, in a nutshell, is also likely to be the primary reason for lower uptake in the young. It doesn't affect them so they don't really care. It's an entirely rational approach, if somewhat selfish.
  - mam3 5y ago
    But then you are walking on 50 years of ethics and clinical trial laws which are here for a reason... if it was not covid no one woukd take a vaccine that early. > It's an entirely rational approach, if somewhat selfish. The only selfish thing is older people who say "young people should take it to protect older people". Its like saying its selfish you dont work for me for free. My body my choice. Vaccine yourself if you want.
- jollybean 5y ago
  Stopping the spread to older people is a very useful thing. They will not 'end up getting it anyhow' this is a fallacy.
sillycross 5y ago
I skimmed the original paper. It surprised me that the vaccine hesitant percentage for PhDs remained unchanged (in fact, even increased a tiny bit) throughout Jan - May 2021, while the % for all other groups are steady decreasing.
Mordisquitos 5y ago
The most vaccine-hesitant group of all when grouped by education level. This may seem nitpicky, but the paper finds much higher vaccine hesitancy in many other groupings by age or ethnicity. One interesting feature of the data in the paper is that the level of vaccine hesitancy in more educated people seems to have been much flatter over time than that of less educated people [0]. It's as if more educated people were more likely to have made up their minds from the start. Unfortunately, I don't think the paper provides any information on how training in different academic subjects correlates with vaccine hesitancy—a PhD can be in molecular biology just as much as it can be in comparative linguistics. [0] Page 27: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.20.21260795v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.20.21260795v...
- neRok 5y ago
  > It's as if more educated people were more likely to have made up their minds from the start. I wonder if it's because a larger portion of the less-educated people were hesitant due to fear, and that was relieved over time (seeing friends and family get it, seeing celebrities get it, etc). The more-educated people on the other hand may have come to their conclusion after studying the available facts and deciding that a wait-and-see approach would be better. This would therefore suggest that not enough new information/data has be released yet to change their mind (although this might change soon with more countries hitting high vax levels and opening up).
  - Mordisquitos 5y ago
    It could be, though as I mentioned in another comment these results don't reflect my own experience in my social circles, where if anything having (or working-towards) a PhD correlates with being more trusting of the vaccine (with the caveat of my sample being skewed towards experimental sciences and biology in particular). In any case, after reading other comments mentioning that the data is self-reported, I find it much more believable that many vaccine-hesitants have falsely claimed to have a PhD. That would explain why only the purported "PhD" group is disproportionately hesitant. If it was a real effect you would expect at least some increase in hesitancy in people with Master's, who may well be on their way towards a PhD.
Traster 5y ago
Perhaps those least likely to take the vaccine are most likely to claim fake qualifications?
boomboomsubban 5y ago
If I'm reading this correctly, this is based off a Facebook survey in which you self select your education level. The survey responses had enough blatantly transphobic entries to warrant mentioning in the limitations, and the % of responders with PhD's is a fair amount higher than the % of Americans with PhD's. I'd bet many people were dishonest about their education.
- forgotpwd16 5y ago
  Seems you're right. From page 4 of the paper: 56 This analysis used the COVID Trends and Impact Survey (CTIS), created by the Delphi Group at 57 Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and conducted in collaboration with Facebook Data for 58 Good. Survey sampling is described in the eMethods. Survey weights accounting for the 59 sampling design and non-response are post-stratified to match the US general population by 60 age, gender, and state. The study design ensures CMU researchers do not see usernames or 61 profile information and Facebook does not see survey microdata. A not sane approach giving off potentially erroneous data.
- d_tr 5y ago
  Another question I have is whether varying Facebook usage patterns and tendency to actually take the survey, among different groups and people with varying opinions, is accounted for and whether it can be accounted for at all.
- rsynnott 5y ago
  A _Facebook survey_? Oh, come on. That's a ridiculous way to do pretty much anything.
- bobbobson 5y ago
  The survey was online, yes, which is what allowed over 5 million people taking part in it. This is not uncommon in scientific articles, and I don't see why mentioning Facebook in your comment is relevant. Also 2.1% of the responders had a PhD and 2.0% of the US population has a PhD, that does not seem like "a fair amount higher". They also mention that "our sample is more educated with higher vaccine uptake than general population, indicating that vaccine hesitancy is underestimated in this sample." and that "Survey weights adjust for non response and coverage bias". With regards to the "small percentage" of transphobic comments, they say that "A sensitivity analysis eliminating respondents with self-described gender produced very similar results". So basically everything you said to try to discredit this particular paper that goes against your preconceived beliefs is irrelevant/wrong.
was_a_dev 5y ago
* in the US
- senectus1 5y ago
  also *via self reported education level on Facebook... Veracity of this poll is highly suspicious.
RyEgswuCsn 5y ago
I suspect it's just that many PhDs have first hand experience working with cutting edge technologies --- they understand how fragile and unreliable they can be sometimes despite all the extraordinary claims made in the publications. Also PhDs tend to form their own opinion on things and be quite stubborn about it (that's how they got their degrees in the first place after all :), which explains why their hesitancy didn't change much.
jasonpeacock 5y ago
One's education level/degree does not correlate strongly with anything other than one's desire to achieve that education level/degree. I wouldn't make any inferences beyond that.
- tharne 5y ago
  At this point, education (both the level of, and the schools one attended) is mainly a proxy for social class. That's why employers love to ask for it. You can't say on your job posting that you want middle class applicants only, but you can require a college degree for a call center job and run a credit check on applicants to boot. That weeds out a lot of folks that it would be illegal to weed out via other means.
drops 5y ago
The assumption that someone with a PhD is smarter, on average, than someone without a PhD is quite laughable.
- tharne 5y ago
  > The assumption that someone with a PhD is smarter, on average, than someone without a PhD is quite laughable. While the sample size is admittedly small, my own personal experience has suggested that the opposite may be true.
- jollybean 5y ago
  ? I can't believe that anyone would think this. Also the average IQ for those doing their PhD is about 125, which is 25 points and almost a couple sigmas past average. Moreover, anyone who has been around PhD's would see very clearly that this is the case.
  - drops 5y ago
    IQ is a eugenic, pseudo-scientific nonsense, as far as means of measuring intellect goes. https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39 https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-...
    - jollybean 5y ago
      So you believe that PhD's are 'not smarter' - or you believe there's no such thing as 'smarter? Either way you're losing this one badly. IQ and 'intelligence' are difficult qualities, no doubt, but they crudely do exist, and PhD's are 'smarter'. That's pretty much unambiguous.
      - drops 5y ago
        This is actually hilarious. The fact that _you_ are putting “smarter” in quotes, proving my point, means that you’re losing the argument - and, furthermore, viewing a random exchange on the internet in terms of ‘winning’ and ‘losing’ instead of viewing it as a means of finding the truth or at least exchanging different perspectives already says a lot more than could fly beneath your head. To add insult to the injury, by your own request, you already accept the fact that PhDs are “smarter” only in terms of arbitrary metrics _defined_ by the PhDs. I’m sorry if you actually spent money on getting yours, though. I would try to let go of the ego and accept it and not try to cope with it in a thread that everyone forgot about (the only reason I’m replying is because I’m getting reply notifications from the ‘HN Replies’ bot).

37 points by Vindl 5y ago

mam3 5y ago

Yeah, this is why the pro-vaccine propaganda is insanely condescending: of course we (phd) know that vaccine are efficient to stop the disease, and we are not debating that. In most case we debating the right to refuse it (which is basically not the case anymore for example in france), and also the fact that for many young people, it's close to useless. Useless in the sense that the probability of having severe forms is suuuuuper low, and that the argument of 'limiting the spread to older/weaker people' is not so convincing since on the long term covid will end up spreading to the older/weaker people anyway if themselves don't vaccinate. SO we should focus the effort on convincing older/weaker to vaccinate and leave the Phds/young.

Traster 5y ago
The survey this report is based on asked if you would take the vaccine today. Your point about being forced is irrelevant to this question. What it’s finding is people with phds aren’t making that argument - they don’t want to take it themselves. Also you say you know the vaccine is efficient to stop the disease, but it’s close to useless “for many young people” but then you spend a paragraph arguing it isn’t.
- mam3 5y ago
  No one would take a vaccine which is still expérimental if it was not covid. Especially not the people who dont have consequence of it. Its normal young people dont want it. They only take it because they are forced somehow (mandatory masking and other stuff). The only debate worth it is how much you have to make it mandatory
  - Mordisquitos 5y ago
    > No one would take a vaccine which is still expérimental if it was not covid. While that may sound intuitively true, what does a vaccine "being experimental" actually mean objectively? For a vaccine to be experimental can mean many subtly different things depending on the context, and the currently deployed COVID-19 vaccines are only "experimental" with regards to the legal and customary fictions of the official procedures that are ordinarily in place for novel medications. These procedures have a reason to exist, of course, but they do not determine any objective fact about the reality of our current knowledge about these vaccines. To rest ones trust on these vaccines on them being officially "experimental" or not is to fall into the fallacy of reification.
    - mam3 5y ago
      > These procedures have a reason to exist, of course, but they do not determine any objective fact about the reality of our current knowledge about these vaccines. It's still in phase 2 or 3. it has to be beyond 4. The reason is that indeed, theses rules were put in place because it was "assessed" that this delay was necessary to proprely evaluate thre effects of drugs, based probably on past problems. As such ou "current konwledge about these vaccines" is incomplete
Mordisquitos 5y ago
However, in my social circles I have found that more educated people (some with PhDs) are more likely to want to be vaccinated, and less likely to display any hesitancy. Then again, it's not a representative sample as it's mostly people working in science or with PhDs in biology.
lucozade 5y ago
> SO we should focus the effort on convincing older/weaker to vaccinate and leave the Phds/young That was a perfectly reasonable argument when vaccine supply was limited and there was a huge number of older/weaker people needing vaccines. And that was, in fact, the approach that almost all countries took at the early stages of vaccine rollout. But it's not a good argument now. At least not in the countries with high uptake. As the vaccines aren't 100% effective, reducing transmissibility will save lives. Still. And it is absolutely true that the young are much less likely to get severely affected from catching COVID. And that, in a nutshell, is also likely to be the primary reason for lower uptake in the young. It doesn't affect them so they don't really care. It's an entirely rational approach, if somewhat selfish.
- mam3 5y ago
  But then you are walking on 50 years of ethics and clinical trial laws which are here for a reason... if it was not covid no one woukd take a vaccine that early. > It's an entirely rational approach, if somewhat selfish. The only selfish thing is older people who say "young people should take it to protect older people". Its like saying its selfish you dont work for me for free. My body my choice. Vaccine yourself if you want.
jollybean 5y ago
Stopping the spread to older people is a very useful thing. They will not 'end up getting it anyhow' this is a fallacy.

sillycross 5y ago

I skimmed the original paper. It surprised me that the vaccine hesitant percentage for PhDs remained unchanged (in fact, even increased a tiny bit) throughout Jan - May 2021, while the % for all other groups are steady decreasing.

Mordisquitos 5y ago

The most vaccine-hesitant group of all when grouped by education level. This may seem nitpicky, but the paper finds much higher vaccine hesitancy in many other groupings by age or ethnicity. One interesting feature of the data in the paper is that the level of vaccine hesitancy in more educated people seems to have been much flatter over time than that of less educated people [0]. It's as if more educated people were more likely to have made up their minds from the start. Unfortunately, I don't think the paper provides any information on how training in different academic subjects correlates with vaccine hesitancy—a PhD can be in molecular biology just as much as it can be in comparative linguistics. [0] Page 27: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.20.21260795v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.20.21260795v...

neRok 5y ago
> It's as if more educated people were more likely to have made up their minds from the start. I wonder if it's because a larger portion of the less-educated people were hesitant due to fear, and that was relieved over time (seeing friends and family get it, seeing celebrities get it, etc). The more-educated people on the other hand may have come to their conclusion after studying the available facts and deciding that a wait-and-see approach would be better. This would therefore suggest that not enough new information/data has be released yet to change their mind (although this might change soon with more countries hitting high vax levels and opening up).
- Mordisquitos 5y ago
  It could be, though as I mentioned in another comment these results don't reflect my own experience in my social circles, where if anything having (or working-towards) a PhD correlates with being more trusting of the vaccine (with the caveat of my sample being skewed towards experimental sciences and biology in particular). In any case, after reading other comments mentioning that the data is self-reported, I find it much more believable that many vaccine-hesitants have falsely claimed to have a PhD. That would explain why only the purported "PhD" group is disproportionately hesitant. If it was a real effect you would expect at least some increase in hesitancy in people with Master's, who may well be on their way towards a PhD.

Traster 5y ago

Perhaps those least likely to take the vaccine are most likely to claim fake qualifications?

boomboomsubban 5y ago

If I'm reading this correctly, this is based off a Facebook survey in which you self select your education level. The survey responses had enough blatantly transphobic entries to warrant mentioning in the limitations, and the % of responders with PhD's is a fair amount higher than the % of Americans with PhD's. I'd bet many people were dishonest about their education.

forgotpwd16 5y ago
Seems you're right. From page 4 of the paper: 56 This analysis used the COVID Trends and Impact Survey (CTIS), created by the Delphi Group at 57 Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and conducted in collaboration with Facebook Data for 58 Good. Survey sampling is described in the eMethods. Survey weights accounting for the 59 sampling design and non-response are post-stratified to match the US general population by 60 age, gender, and state. The study design ensures CMU researchers do not see usernames or 61 profile information and Facebook does not see survey microdata. A not sane approach giving off potentially erroneous data.
d_tr 5y ago
Another question I have is whether varying Facebook usage patterns and tendency to actually take the survey, among different groups and people with varying opinions, is accounted for and whether it can be accounted for at all.
rsynnott 5y ago
A _Facebook survey_? Oh, come on. That's a ridiculous way to do pretty much anything.
bobbobson 5y ago
The survey was online, yes, which is what allowed over 5 million people taking part in it. This is not uncommon in scientific articles, and I don't see why mentioning Facebook in your comment is relevant. Also 2.1% of the responders had a PhD and 2.0% of the US population has a PhD, that does not seem like "a fair amount higher". They also mention that "our sample is more educated with higher vaccine uptake than general population, indicating that vaccine hesitancy is underestimated in this sample." and that "Survey weights adjust for non response and coverage bias". With regards to the "small percentage" of transphobic comments, they say that "A sensitivity analysis eliminating respondents with self-described gender produced very similar results". So basically everything you said to try to discredit this particular paper that goes against your preconceived beliefs is irrelevant/wrong.

was_a_dev 5y ago

* in the US

senectus1 5y ago
also *via self reported education level on Facebook... Veracity of this poll is highly suspicious.

RyEgswuCsn 5y ago

I suspect it's just that many PhDs have first hand experience working with cutting edge technologies --- they understand how fragile and unreliable they can be sometimes despite all the extraordinary claims made in the publications. Also PhDs tend to form their own opinion on things and be quite stubborn about it (that's how they got their degrees in the first place after all :), which explains why their hesitancy didn't change much.

jasonpeacock 5y ago

One's education level/degree does not correlate strongly with anything other than one's desire to achieve that education level/degree. I wouldn't make any inferences beyond that.

tharne 5y ago
At this point, education (both the level of, and the schools one attended) is mainly a proxy for social class. That's why employers love to ask for it. You can't say on your job posting that you want middle class applicants only, but you can require a college degree for a call center job and run a credit check on applicants to boot. That weeds out a lot of folks that it would be illegal to weed out via other means.

drops 5y ago

The assumption that someone with a PhD is smarter, on average, than someone without a PhD is quite laughable.

tharne 5y ago
> The assumption that someone with a PhD is smarter, on average, than someone without a PhD is quite laughable. While the sample size is admittedly small, my own personal experience has suggested that the opposite may be true.
jollybean 5y ago
? I can't believe that anyone would think this. Also the average IQ for those doing their PhD is about 125, which is 25 points and almost a couple sigmas past average. Moreover, anyone who has been around PhD's would see very clearly that this is the case.
- drops 5y ago
  IQ is a eugenic, pseudo-scientific nonsense, as far as means of measuring intellect goes. https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39 https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-...
  - jollybean 5y ago
    So you believe that PhD's are 'not smarter' - or you believe there's no such thing as 'smarter? Either way you're losing this one badly. IQ and 'intelligence' are difficult qualities, no doubt, but they crudely do exist, and PhD's are 'smarter'. That's pretty much unambiguous.
    - drops 5y ago
      This is actually hilarious. The fact that _you_ are putting “smarter” in quotes, proving my point, means that you’re losing the argument - and, furthermore, viewing a random exchange on the internet in terms of ‘winning’ and ‘losing’ instead of viewing it as a means of finding the truth or at least exchanging different perspectives already says a lot more than could fly beneath your head. To add insult to the injury, by your own request, you already accept the fact that PhDs are “smarter” only in terms of arbitrary metrics _defined_ by the PhDs. I’m sorry if you actually spent money on getting yours, though. I would try to let go of the ego and accept it and not try to cope with it in a thread that everyone forgot about (the only reason I’m replying is because I’m getting reply notifications from the ‘HN Replies’ bot).