So I finally read that link, and I cannot see where they show that it is wrong to say that the study in question showed that PhD's were the education group with the highest level of hesitancy in May (the most recent data point).
I don't get the point of inserting "[among the vaccine hesitant]" in the quote of the press release, nor how it is backed up by the text in said press release.
This is the first half of the
press release:
»A study conducted by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh has found that vaccine hesitancy has decreased among US adults by one-third between January and May 2021. While tentative people are concerned about COVID-19 vaccine safety and potential side effects, those with stronger views tend to distrust the government. The researchers published their results on medRxiv, a preprint website, and announced their results today, ahead of peer-reviewed publication.
The researchers, Robin Mejia, special faculty at the CMU Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences and senior author on the paper, and Wendy C. King, associate professor of epidemiology in Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health and first author, reviewed the responses of approximately 1 million Americans per month to assess trends in vaccine acceptance.
The researchers partnered with the Delphi Group at CMU, who run an ongoing national COVID-19 survey in collaboration with the Facebook Data for Good group.
The survey asked people whether they would take a vaccine were it offered to them today. People who said “probably not” or “definitely not” were considered to be vaccine hesitant.
Mejia and King analyzed the data by race, education, US region and Trump support in the 2020 election to assess time trends and how each group’s outlooks changed regarding vaccination. The data from May provides the current relationship between a broad range of factors and vaccine acceptance.
The largest decrease in hesitancy between January and May by education group was in those with a high school education or less. Hesitancy held constant in the most educated group (those with a PhD); by May PhD’s were the most hesitant group. While vaccine hesitancy decreased across virtually all racial groups, Black people and Pacific Islanders had the largest decreases, joining Hispanics and Asians at having lower vaccine hesitancy than white people in May.«
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It flat out confirms that by May PhD's were the most hesitant group (by education). And it is super easy to actually check the numbers in the paper.
The "fact-checking" site in question (thruthorfiction.com) seems super low-grade, funded by clicks and staffed by an editor and two journalists.
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And so what if PhD's were the education group that was most vaccine hesitant in May?