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Comment by yodon | Hacker News Reader

The paper does not list any numbers for vaccination rates among PhDs, it only lists self-reported "vaccine hesitancy" numbers.

There is zero data here to suggest actual vaccination rates among PhDs are lower than among the general public but the title of this paper will undoubtedly be used by vaccine skeptics to imply that PhDs aren't getting vaccinated.

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Compared to the US population, the proportion of PhDs in their sample seems inflated, and the proportion of people with only a high school diploma is lower then expected. I wonder how much one can trust a self-reported PhD degree, especially from a survey collected on the internet.

The post title doesn't suggest anything otherwise.. This is a paper about hesitancy.

but if it's self reported. It might only show that they are more willing to say they're hesitant. or they were willing to take a survey.

yep, I always find surveys to be a very lazy way of "doing science" but that is probably for another thread. The results of this survey do create an interesting (and in my opinion, believable) talking point, and maybe can lead to a better researched paper on the subject. I personally think that PhD students are more likely going to be cautious of anything they don't have a good understanding of. They would (imo) be inclined to do better research into the pros/cons of vaccination, which is not easy to do right now with all the noise online.

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