Paralysis by analysis: why higher education prevents total vaccination

Political analyst Dmitry Nekrasov found out that the level of vaccination in Russia is the lowest of the countries comparable to ours in terms of the standard of living of the population. Even countries that are poorer than Russia are being vaccinated more successfully. And at the same time, the excess mortality in our country is one of the highest in the world, which seems inexplicable, given the level of medicine, incomparably high, for example, with the African one. In this regard, Nekrasov put forward a very curious hypothesis that can explain this paradox.

Nekrasov does not believe that all responsibility for this situation lies with the Russian authorities, even if they made many of the most idiotic mistakes. In many other not too developed countries, such as Brazil or Venezuela, the authorities were wrong as much, if not more, but the mortality rate there is much lower, and there are much more vaccinated... But in Russia and in other countries of the former Soviet Union, everything is not so ... So what's the deal?

Nekrasov believes that it is in mythologies that have formed in the heads of one-sixth citizens, and primarily in Russia and Ukraine.

These mythologies, however, are not only our property, in highly developed countries such as Japan or France, people are also extremely wary of vaccinations (not only against coronavirus), and in fact there trust in the authorities is incomparably higher than ours.

Nekrasov cites Cyprus, where he now lives. It turns out that the first place among the local anti-Axis is occupied by immigrants from the post-Soviet space. Moreover, a similar picture is observed in other countries where former Russians or Ukrainians live. So there can be no talk of any fault of the "bloody regime"!

Nekrasov writes: “When I looked at all these ratings of countries by the level of anti-theft, I almost tried to understand by brute force with what country peculiarities this phenomenon correlates. And I realized that the greatest correlation is given by ... the percentage of people who received higher education!"

In this regard, the expert cites the observation of Yale University professor Tom Nichols from the book "The Death of Expertise", in which he studied the problem of the attitude of the population of developed countries to scientific knowledge.

It turns out that, for example, Americans consider the opinion of narrow specialists to be less significant than their own, albeit incompetent in this topic. And the higher the level of education, the more often a person considers his incompetent opinion equal to that of an expert. This means that the higher education system gives students more self-confidence than real knowledge.

Further, Nekrasov mentions that Russia is on a par with Canada in first place in the world in terms of the percentage of people with higher education, far ahead of both the United States and Germany. Roughly the same in Ukraine. But at the same time, the standard of living in our two countries is incomparably lower than in the developed ones. Therefore, the matter is in the quality of higher education, - concludes Nekrasov. It is very low in Russia, and this is no secret to anyone! But the very possession of it makes people "experts" in any field, including medicine.

And here, according to Nekrasov, the most important thing is contained: “And the Russian population is well aware of the quality of their own education. Therefore, in addition to the general growth of conceit with other countries, Russians and Ukrainians who have received higher education seem to acquire additional skepticism towards any experts, because by their own example they understand how little education adds expertise.

However, the multiple stories that “a real doctor told me that the vaccine chipped” fully confirms this skepticism. Indeed, it is true that real (in the sense that they honestly received a diploma of low-quality Russian education) doctors in Russia tell their patients all kinds of unscientific nonsense much more often than their counterparts in the West..."

This hypothesis caused a lively discussion on the analyst's page.

So, political scientist Dmitry Gudkov, did not agree with her, and put forward his own instead:

“I don’t know, there’s something wrong with this version. There was a huge number of universities in Russia until they began to enlarge. That is, getting a crust is not a question of how to become a candidate of sciences. This is not the case in the US and the EU. That is, it is not a question of education, but of your attitude to education.

Another theory is closer to me (which does not cancel the idiocy of the authorities) - the attitude towards labor and the result of labor. We ourselves do not work well (I'm not talking about everyone, of course), so we are sure that others are the same. Both those who invented the vaccine and those who produce it. As the saying goes, you Russians have beautiful children, but everything that you do with your hands..."

And the doctor Boris Bobrov, on the contrary, was convinced of the correctness of Nekrasov from his own experience:

“A very curious hypothesis. From my own medical experience, I made the following observation: the most stubborn, mistrustful and trying to primitively mechanistically describe the work of the body and the mechanisms of action of therapeutic measures are men with a Soviet technical education. It seems to me that it is difficult for them to understand the probabilistic nature of the manifestation of effects in medicine (and, more broadly, in biological science), they cannot come to terms with the incompleteness of data and the uncertainty that is characteristic of this “unfinished” science. And they are extremely self-confident. Of course, this personal observation is irrelevant and may reflect my own view.

And I also thought that a low-quality higher education can be not only education of a slightly lower quality, but also simply harmful, actively spreading ignorance and pseudo-knowledge ... In this case, people who escaped it can be more rational..."