Study Finds Most Highly Educated Americans Are Also the Most Vaccine Hesitant
A new report by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh has found that the most highly educated Americans are also the most vaccine hesitant.
The researchers canvassed no fewer than 5 million Americans who responded to surveys on whether they were “probably” or “definitely not planning on getting a COVID vaccine.
“More surprising is the breakdown in vaccine hesitancy by level of education,” reports UnHerd. “It finds that the association between hesitancy and education level follows a U-shaped curve with the highest hesitancy among those least and most educated. People a master’s degree had the least hesitancy, and the highest hesitancy was among those holding a PhD.”
In addition, while the lowest educated saw the largest drop in vaccine hesitancy for the first five months of 2021, those with PhD’s were the most likely to not change their minds.
Yes Virginia there is a bell curve.
PhDs are not in my experience any more intelligent than anyone else as a group but they have traditionally been trained to think for themselves and employ rationality and consideration of the potential flaws in the data. They are also trained to think for themselves and not be swayed by the prevailing opinion. (I do worry this is changing in our era of CRT and such.) The data does not add up.
Absolutely love this image https://cdn.summit.news/2021/08/54CmAoVw.jpg
Having gone through the Ph. D. circus, I agree with much of what you wrote.
However, I’ve long suspected that if getting a doctorate had anything to do with intelligence, talent, and hard work, many universities would have to close because they won’t be able to find enough faculty. It also explains why some professors really are thick as a plank.
In my experience, getting a Ph. D. was purely political and what your supervisor thought of you. Even if that person hated you, if you were still useful to them, by providing lots of data that they could publish under their own name, you were allowed to continue.
Been there, suffered for it.
B A, those of us without a PHD and a very good education always said it was Piled High and Deep. Unless a thesis was verifiable science it was considered opinion by many of us.
A lot of times, it’s difficult to verify what one discusses in one’s thesis, particularly when one is investigating an obscure or new subject. In those instances, any results would be pushing the boundaries.
All one can really do in those circumstances is present one’s findings and explain them in a logical, rational fashion.
B A , as the Bible says, there is nothing new under the sun.
So it’s Dr. B A Deplorable Rupertslander I presume?
Yup. Been that way for more than 20 years, not that it helped me get a job in this country. The politicking I mentioned earlier often helps one get a faculty position, despite the obvious “no white heterosexual conservative men need apply” job requirements.
I’m retired now, so I don’t care any more.
Impressive. Good on ya.
Thank you.
My parents were pleased, too. After all, they came to Canada as journeymen in their respective trades. They wanted something better for me and, back when we came over, even going to university was considered a privilege and an honour.
I made sure they attended my convocation. I also contacted as many of my former high school teachers as I could and thanked them.
I agree. My advisors deliberately and openly withheld my thesis for an additional year because they wanted to use my work to get a few more papers and grant applications out. I was captive slave labour and it was basically do it or else. Then as soon as I finished and graduated I was out. I got no help whatsoever in getting work. The department had no room for another PhD. PhDs cost too much. I was replaced by another PhD candidate. The PhD turned into a milestone as far as employment opportunities went. I was overqualified. The number of PhDs in Canada who actually end up in that coveted tenure track assistant professorship after postdocing is 0.2%. I tell anyone who asks, get a good professional degree like engineering or nursing or get a trade. That PhD is worthless.
What was the end result and benefit of your thesis?
My neighbour just down the hall has a Ph. D. in English and he’s getting by teaching courses at 2 different post-secondary institutions in the city. It’s that way for a lot of academics.
I’ve got 4 degrees in 2 engineering disciplines, including the aforementioned doctorate, which I considered another professional qualification. That didn’t help. Even being registered in 3 provinces didn’t help me get a job, either.
No, what companies wanted was someone much younger and, consequently, cheaper. (I was in my mid-40s when I finished my studies.) A lot of engineering firms farmed out their work to temporary foreign workers, who were brought in from, say, Coleslawvania under contract, many of them when Harper was PM.
Yup, Canada was a land of opportunity, wasn’t it?
I went to the States. Best thing I ever did. Came back -after- I made some money down there, bought houses. That’s the only thing that makes money in Canaduh.
You notice all the big companies that don’t dig stuff out of the ground went to China? There’s a reason for that.
Oh, I made money after I got my Ph. D. I just didn’t do it by practicing engineering.
Over the years preceding that, I had saved and invested some money. I had accumulated enough that I could set out on my own, which was why I could afford to quit my job at Armpit College.
I was able to pay my rent and my bills from my investments, so I think I did something right. Meanwhile, I tinkered on the research I did for my Ph. D.
Can confirm, have gone through the same circus.
Difference being I worked in the real world for a number of years before going back to Uni. I could not believe how most professors where book smart but had zero common sense. This is especially true for the climate crowd which has now spilled over to the forestry crowd. I chatted with one who reiterated the claim that the oceans are rising 3mm per year because my truck is spewing carbon dioxide pollution. I told him that I bought a house right by the ocean twenty years ago and have walked my dogs right on the shoreline for those twenty years and have not seen a rise of a few millimeters let alone 6 cm worth. He gave me the Yup, 3 mm every year, because of Man. then I told him the the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics has never listed carbon dioxide as a pollutant. Well, it is now, according to this putz. I will take a Joe Bastardi or Dr. Tim Ball over any of these clowns any day.
I will also take most farmers, fishermen, tradesmen etc etc over most PhDs because they have to actually think to get the job done.
The biggest mistake that academe made when it came to hiring engineering professors was to start taking them right out of school. No actual professional experience, either in the field or in a design office, was necessary. In fact, any break from one’s studies to go into industry was, and still is, considered to be detrimental to one’s career prospects.
That started about 40 years ago. Yeah, I often butted heads with engineering professors who thought they knew more about practicing the profession than I did. I, at least, earned some battle scars, so to speak, as proof that I had some idea of what I was talking about, having spent several years out in industry.
The new normal is people are specialized in what they do, which they might be good at, but are morons at everything else.
I went to school with academically brilliant people who’s greatest challenge though was balancing their chequebook.
No real world awareness. Education doesn’t make you smart, it makes you educated, though illiterate and innumerate.
The true test of wisdom is knowing you don’t know everything, but would like to know.
The true test of an overspecialized, overeducated fool is they think they know everything, but don’t want to truly know.
We’re ruled by hypocrites and incompetents who double down on problem, with their created, and thus their failed solutions.
30 years of failed global warming apocalypse never happened, but instead of recognizing a disproved hypothesis we get nothing but more shrill surety which is so confident is its conclusions that any all contrary viewpoint must be shut down.
The same goes with covid. The same goes with Marxism and its collectivist creation, the radical ruled US Democrat party.
Imagine a real science like cosmology taking the same approach. If it did a Nobel Prize wouldn’t go one who proved the universe’s expansion is accelerating, it would have gone to someone who used junk science to refute, ridicule and censor the real science in favour of ideology – aka scientism, aka it’s polar opposite of consensus, which coincidentally is always at 97%.
The weakness of their arguments is inversely related to the rebuttals they revoke. The more angry, the more wrong they are.
But, but, but,
The Sophicated and Elite NYT told me the Sophisticated and Elite Obama Birthday Party attendees were all vaccinated and practically immune to the Chinese Coronavirus.
Did they Lie?
All those “sophisticates” are just waiting to see how the vaccines affect the “deplorables” before they partake. Sarc/on
They probably can read a science paper.
Yes, I’m being tongue in cheek. That said, as Robert Barnes has pointed out, the insert with the vaccine clearly states, multiple times the limitations of the vaccine. But……how many people read it without their eyes glazing over.
The sophisticated and elite at Obama’s bash are probably all beneficiaries of ‘affirmative action’!
They also know that the whu who flu is not going to kill them . They must be much smarter than the average bear.
All the attendees were likely immune because they all had TDS.
+++B A
Right on Time!!! Chinese Coronavirus infections in Martha’s Vineyard are up 1,289%.
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/395157.php
Sophisticated and Elite Sh!t Midas Obama strikes again!
Who gives a shit, it is not going to kill everyone. idiots and morons now populate the planet.
Check the “Obituaries of the Rich and Famous” for the next six weeks.
Because you know the Mainstream Media will never connect any death and Obama’s Party.
Yeah, it’s getting harder to dispose of all the bodies littering the streets as healthy people drop dead in their tracks from the Chicom Flu!
Oh the humanities!!?
With the Delta variant here now we’re going to need front-end loaders and dump trucks to clear the bodies from the streets.
rd, they ain’t going to die from the whu who flu. Shit, 99.8% of anyone who ever got it survives, they just need a big box of kleenex.
“Obituaries of the Rich and Famous”
You mean obituaries for people who matter, don’t you? (sarcasm = off)
If ya’ll think, you have to very concerned about the not vaccines.
Mandatory Vaccination:
http://stonetoss.com/
Can someone help me here. Were we told that the vaccine was going to stop the spread of Covid-19 and prevent people from getting it? Seems to me that the story has changed to “it will ease the disease’s severity”
No, you understand correctly. That’s the story now that it turns out the vaccines don’t really stop you from getting COVID-19 as promised. I do enjoy the argument now that this is perfectly normal and that’s all vaccines are meant to do.
Pretty much. They’ve changed the argument to keeping yourself from a stay in the hospital.
There are plenty of people who still think the only people not getting the shot are, as the title suggests, “Ignorant Rednecks”, whom I’ve also seen called “Trumptards”. I live in a major urban area and it’s blacks and hispanics who are the most hesitant, as in people who on average wouldn’t have voted for Trump. Plus it’s Trump who got these shots fast-tracked through the FDA’s bureaucracy, which some people like to conveniently forget.
Anecdotally, I’m seeing more and more businesses, particularly restaurants and bars, requiring vaccination cards for entry. Most other places have just put the mask requirements back in force or else strongly suggest them.
Actually, the narrative began with IT’S TRUMP’S VACCINE DON’T TAKE IT IT WILL KILL YOU!
(my preferred term for the militant vaxxers is “vaxtards”)
Well the Government of Manitoba said from day one the vaccines will not stop you from getting or transmitting the virus. I wrote to them several times and I asked why should I get the vaccine then? I never got an answer back. All I ever got was form letters about how the vaccines were safe and effective and I should get one.
I actually don’t know why anyone ever thought these vaccines would work because the government never said they would.
I wonder if semantics played a big role. To some people, vaccine = Never gonna get it. A shot, like the flu shot, means you still can, just hopefully less bad.
Now it’s gotten into heads that this is supposed to be a “make it less bad” shot. Are people who haven’t gotten the shot still getting seriously ill, dying, or being left with long-term complications? Yes. So are people who have. But I think that’s the main argument they’re using now, get it so you’re less sick when and if you do get sick.
One does not need an alphabet soup by one’s name to conclude that the Chinese-spread flu is fatal to some but not all, that China did, in fact, spread this virus deliberately, that the flu shots are ineffective wastes of time and are more likely to cause harm than not and that companies and governments are benefitting from this.
College: can’t beat it!
The government advertising pushing vaccination is NOT aimed at Trump enthusiasts or PhD graduates. Nope. The ads are all hip-hop soundtracks, and spoken in Ebonics. You do the math.
And yeah … bell curves are like basic economics … two of the ABSOLUTE truths in this world.
I believe that those on the opposite side of that U-curve (the ones who caved) were lured by the Crispy Cream donuts — or may be it was the lottery ticket. I am stunned by how desperate they are to get everyone vaccinated, while ignoring treatments and natural immunity,
“I am stunned by how desperate they are to get everyone vaccinated, while ignoring treatments and natural immunity.”
Right? I see them lie and change their story to a new lie every friggin’ week, all to try to convince us to take an experimental vaccine for a COLD. Survival rate over 99%++ for healthy people under 80 with no treatment (because they banned the treatments!) but we all need to take the mad science mRNA genetic modification experiment because [insert current bald faced lie here].
My favorite lie so far was Tam reversing herself on masks over the course of a few days. First masks were bad, because people were too stupid to wear them right. Then masks were good, because people were too stupid to wash their hands. That was juicy.