Every time I've filled a script for antibiotics, they have been accompanied by very prominent written warnings that you must complete the full prescribed course. Often reiterated verbally by the pharmacist.
Stern warnings with no information about possible consequences is heavily lambasted in movies, yet we repeat this behavior with medicine and expect different results.
If you tell someone not to do something and don't tell them why not, and the consequences aren't otherwise clear, expect them to do what you said not to do.
Stepping down off a high dosage in halves is the exact same strategy used to ease people out of addiction.
As a kid, I thought anti-biotics were this far-out medicine, so strong and hazardous that coming down off them was something you had to do carefully.
I got strep throat a few times as a kid. I don't have perfect recall about the details of what I had to take and when or why, though. But I do remember having to vary dosage.
My mother was a nurse so she always reminded me of the critical missing reason why, and I've always dutifully finished all antibiotics prescriptions as a result.
But that was a simple thing the doctors writing the prescription should have been doing themselves, and an apparent systemic failure of the medical profession to account for messy human psychology in a critical procedure.
Gone are the days where a doctor should be taken at his judgment 100% as if medicine is a black box enigma. The average HNer would be wise to google about their conditions and drugs they consume. A doctor can only remember so much - they are primarily valuable for their experience in hueristic diagnosis -- not for knowing everything medical and everything pharmacutical. It is wise to relinquish some responsibility to a professional but not all.
Most of medicine aside from surgical methods can be understood by a mildly intelligent person who cares enough, because of wikipedia and google, everything except actual experience is very accessible.
I dont see how your astonishment is anything other than misinformed hyperbole.
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Antibiot...
For the most part, of course. Cultural evolution does occur, however it's unpredictable and not something that can be easily forced.
Given an instruction when you don't understand the "why" is highly ineffective. As seen by your experience with your doctor.
There is also a further problem in that antibiotics treat not just you, but prevent infection in the wider population. People in general find it hard to think about the wider impact, which is something we see every day with regards to the world wide population's regards to the impact of their own pollution. It's why we recycle but then drive SUVs.
"Take all of the prescribed medication" : "They're just greedy and want to make me buy more"
vs.
"Take all or you'll breed antibiotic-resistant bacteria that cannot be treated and you will die and kill the human race" : "I better follow this prescription"
It's from Friedrich Nietzsche's "Twilight of the Idols": "What does not kill me, makes me stronger."
Also, most people don't know that either. Today it's just a saying, that's been repeated by people for decades.
Both of them are wrong, btw. Pharma companies are greedy and they do everything they can to make you spend more. Doctors are influenced by them, often very subtly. That is a fact, not a conspiracy. But the fact also is, that doctors save lives and most have noble intentions (despite the meat grinder medical career is). One needs to learn what information belongs more to "greedy companies" category, and what belongs to "life saving science" category. It's no surprise people get confused about this - and that's why you absolutely need to explain to them why they need to finish antibiotics treatments.
I'm ashamed to admit that the big part of my adult life I didn't know the reason behind that, and always assumed that to be of a kind "you must eat your whole meal" constantly told by grandma. I'm sure I'm not the only one..
I agree with the observation that telling people to do something without explaining why is stupid and will only lead to disappointment.