Have you seen people be brainwashed/indoctrinated by their profession?

[Teaching3bears]

Is it possible for people to be brainwashed or indoctrinated by their profession or field of work or study so that they start to see things from a very narrow point of view or cannot see things clearly?   Which fields have you seen this in the most?  

[Carrie12345]

I’m not 100% sure I’m following your train of thought.   
I do know of certain people in a particular industry who try to brainwash and gaslight their employees to believe that their livable wage means they owe their whole lives to work, but I’m not sure that’s what you mean. And I don’t think it’s very rare, unfortunately.

[HomeAgain]

Yes.  Those in religious fields.  They end up in an echo chamber of faith with no substance.  Same with political office workers.  I have a friend who went from mostly sane to spouting all sorts of conspiracy theories after taking a job at a private Christian school, with her new coworkers encouraging her.

 

Beyond that, no.  Most jobs don't care enough about their employees to offer an atmosphere of community, training, or anything else that would create an echo chamber.

[Guest]

Well, I do think it’s weird that my lawyer boss is so prone to believing illogical and not evidence-based things. He was just telling me he 100% believes there is a known cure for “cancer” (Problem #1: Cancer is not one thing and is unlikely to ever have one cure), but that “They” are hushing it up because cancer treatment is lucrative. And this is a person who has lost a parent to a form of cancer. 🙄

ETA: I would think a lawyer of all professions would apply logic and see faulty arguments clearly. Guess not. 

Edited August 31, 2021 by Quill

[Katy]

2 hours ago, Quill said:

Well, I do think it’s weird that my lawyer boss is so prone to believing illogical and not evidence-based things. He was just telling me he 100% believes there is a known cure for “cancer” (Problem #1: Cancer is not one thing and is unlikely to ever have one cure), but that “They” are hushing it up because cancer treatment is lucrative. And this is a person who has lost a parent to a form of cancer. 🙄

ETA: I would think a lawyer of all professions would apply logic and see faulty arguments clearly. Guess not. 

Most lawyers I know have moments of extreme lucidity but are otherwise far more emotionally driven than logical from what I observed.  

I’ve wondered about this too and finally came to the conclusion that more logical but otherwise intelligent people choose fields other than law. Tech, Medicine, Accounting or Engineering all require a similar level of intelligence but all are less emotional.

And I’m not criticizing law.  I grew up thinking I wanted to be a lawyer and considered it again when we had a child staying with us whose mother was actually facing criminal prosecution for child abuse.  I thought she was getting a raw deal and needed better attorneys, both criminally and in foster care.  The same behavior from a rich 18 year old parent not only wouldn’t have been prosecuted, a couple of doctors would have been censured or possibly lost their licenses. And now I’m getting emotional about that and it was almost 5 years ago.

[MercyA]

Yes. People in the military. Obviously not everyone. But they literally use brainwashing techniques to overcome people's natural aversion to killing.

Edited August 31, 2021 by MercyA

[Spryte]

Agreeing with religious fields. I have seen this over and over.

Also, a many of the people I knew who attended religious schools. Not everyone, but definitely the majority. I suppose that falls under field of study.

I knew/know a lot of people in politics, and wouldn’t call any of the ones I know brainwashed or indoctrinated. I would call them passionate, and most times they have been passionate about the same topics since high school/college.

I can’t think of any other examples, if I’m understanding the question. 

 

Edited August 31, 2021 by Spryte
Need more coffee before typing

[Indigo Blue]

This example might not be s good one or what you were looking for, but there is a dermatologist online whose videos I sometimes like to watch. Very smart and knowledgeable. She constantly and consistently warns of fragrance in skin care products because they can be so irritating to the skin and cause reactions in many people. I agree with this. However, there is always a scented candle burning in the background in her videos. I know they are scented because she does shop with me vlogs where she buys them. I just wonder why it doesn’t occur to her that those same toxins can irritate the lining of your sinus cavity and even your lungs. Why doesn’t she extrapolate her knowledge of skin care fragrance to other ways that fragrance is used?

It sounds like I’m criticizing, but I’m genuinely puzzled by the idea that someone who has enough medical knowledge to be educated on fragrance in skin care wouldn’t notice that it might also not be good to breathe fragrances into your delicate sinuses and lungs. 🤔

There are many other similar examples like this that I notice in every day life. 

Edited August 31, 2021 by Indigo Blue

[Slache]

Medical and teaching fields. Doctors and teachers are both brainwashed into thinking they know everything about their field, there is no new information, and anyone who disagrees with them is wrong and potentially harmful to society.

Broad stroke obviously, but I've encountered many examples in both fields.

[Farrar]

I agree with the medical field. One of the most fascinating articles I read about Covid was about the whole airborne thing and it was doctors who refused to believe it because it wasn't in their training. A bunch of super famous particle physicists got a bunch of doctors in a room to try to sway them about why it was obviously possible for Covid (and other viruses!) to be airborne because particle physics and they were downright nasty to them. And the physicists were like, whoa, no one talks to big name international physicist like that about science. I think it's a way of thinking for a lot of doctors where they have to be sure in order to practice and it bleeds into other areas that they don't know anything about - whether it's physics or education or the weather or religion or psychology or anything else. I think that's how we end up with people like Dr. Oz or Deepak Chopra.

Obviously hashtag, not all doctors. Just like not all people in religious fields or not all people in the military.

[KSera]

I see it that in psychology/therapy fields. There’s a long history of various things being accepted in psychology as fact that later end up to be fads or and/or untrue (refrigerator mother causing autism, repressed memories, multiple personalities as examples). 

[EKS]

I don't know if it's appropriate to call it being "brainwashed," but I do think that different professions have different cultures and orientations to the world. 

Some fields where this is most obvious:  education, medicine, alternative medicine, psychology.

[Ausmumof3]

36 minutes ago, Slache said:

Medical and teaching fields. Doctors and teachers are both brainwashed into thinking they know everything about their field, there is no new information, and anyone who disagrees with them is wrong and potentially harmful to society.

Broad stroke obviously, but I've encountered many examples in both fields.

Yep education is what sprung to mind 

[Harriet Vane]

I definitely see it in social work. On one hand, many social workers are accepting and insightful. They work with a lot of tough cases, and the very best ones grow in realism and compassion both. But I have also seen many willing to lie and to minimize and deny in order to guarantee the outcome or the narrative they chose. It is heartbreaking.

[Scarlett]

1 hour ago, MercyA said:

Yes. People in the military. Obviously not everyone. But they literally use brainwashing techniques to overcome people's natural aversion to killing.

My step dad was in the military.  The stories he tells....thankfully he was never in a war and got out soon.  

[Lady Florida.]

I wouldn't call it brainwashing but my stepfather was a K-9 police officer in an urban area. He only had contact with criminal types and as a result his outlook on people who lived in a certain part of our city was skewed. I think brainwashing is having a certain outlook or set of beliefs purposely pushed on you. In some fields, such as his, it's more a result of the daily work.

[Katy]

45 minutes ago, Farrar said:

I agree with the medical field. One of the most fascinating articles I read about Covid was about the whole airborne thing and it was doctors who refused to believe it because it wasn't in their training. A bunch of super famous particle physicists got a bunch of doctors in a room to try to sway them about why it was obviously possible for Covid (and other viruses!) to be airborne because particle physics and they were downright nasty to them. And the physicists were like, whoa, no one talks to big name international physicist like that about science. I think it's a way of thinking for a lot of doctors where they have to be sure in order to practice and it bleeds into other areas that they don't know anything about - whether it's physics or education or the weather or religion or psychology or anything else. I think that's how we end up with people like Dr. Oz or Deepak Chopra.

Obviously hashtag, not all doctors. Just like not all people in religious fields or not all people in the military.

I both agree with you and... they're working with different definitions.  In English, the physicists are right.  They discovered influenza is actually airborne when I was in nursing school.  But in medical terms, airborne is a whole different classification of treatment. And if the CDC admitted it is airborne it would also have to admit we are woefully unprepared for airborne epidemics.  If I remember correctly, a certain classification of hospital (all the ones I've worked at) must have two rooms to treat airborne diseases per ward or floor. The ones I worked at had 4, all the rooms closest to the nurses station.  They're always used for known or suspected tuberculosis patients.  You use a respirator mask that also covers your eyes rather than an N95, and not just a gown but pants over your scrubs and a gown too, plus gloves.  The rooms have negative pressure so when you open the room air sucks in instead of blows out.

Technically we should have this for every Covid ward.  Some hospitals have set it up that way, but most use the same protocols you use for flu, plus a face guard.

I think the CDC looked at the fatality rate and decided Covid isn't TB, it IS worse than the flu, but we're definitely not looking at MERS, the version of coronavirus that killed 100% of people who got it.  If it was MERS they probably would have treated it more like ebola.

[Carol in Cal.]

Teaching and medicine.

[Lady Florida.]

I'm surprised no one besides me mentioned police work.

[EKS]

1 hour ago, Lady Florida. said:

I'm surprised no one besides me mentioned police work.

I only mentioned the fields where I have seen the "brainwashing" firsthand.

[prairiewindmomma]

6 hours ago, Quill said:

Well, I do think it’s weird that my lawyer boss is so prone to believing illogical and not evidence-based things. He was just telling me he 100% believes there is a known cure for “cancer” (Problem #1: Cancer is not one thing and is unlikely to ever have one cure), but that “They” are hushing it up because cancer treatment is lucrative. And this is a person who has lost a parent to a form of cancer. 🙄

ETA: I would think a lawyer of all professions would apply logic and see faulty arguments clearly. Guess not. 

Fwiw, I think this is very much niche within the practice of law. Criminal defense and family law attorneys tend to be the craziest. Intellectual property and estate planners tend to be on the other side of the spectrum. I think it’s based on who they interact with and the experiences they go through.

I have yet to meet a long term criminal law or family law attorney who has been at it for 10+ years who isn’t dealing with a fair bit of trauma and Issues from dealing with the dark corners of life.

[SKL]

I've seen some police officers get overly dramatic about certain risks, because they have seen how bad the worst case scenarios can be.  I've also seen that in certain individuals in the medical field.  If the majority of their waking hours involve caring for the worst case scenarios, then I think naturally that is going to impact their ability to evaluate risks objectively.  And they can get angry at people who see it differently.

[Katy]

10 minutes ago, prairiewindmomma said:

Fwiw, I think this is very much niche within the practice of law. Criminal defense and family law attorneys tend to be the craziest. Intellectual property and estate planners tend to be on the other side of the spectrum. I think it’s based on who they interact with and the experiences they go through.

I have yet to meet a long term criminal law or family law attorney who has been at it for 10+ years who isn’t dealing with a fair bit of trauma and Issues from dealing with the dark corners of life.

I’ve worked with a few family law attorneys that were really good.  Became friends with one of them.  She goes to talk therapy at least once a week. Twice when she’s working on something really bad. 

[Indigo Blue]

I think about trampolines and how dangerous they can be. I’m sure EMTs, doctors, and ER physicians can tell many horror stories, but the families who own them just don’t think about that and even scoff at the idea of worrying about a trampoline. So I guess the brainwashing thing works in reverse, too. 
 

(I’m not judging people who have trampolines. I love them, but it’s a good example, I think. They can be dangerous, though). 

[deBij]

My doctor friends, who are also mothers, are scared of so many things, because they see so many bad outcomes.  It skewed their assessment of risks. 

 

When mentoring my kids for their future professions, long term mental health will be part of the discussion.

[BlsdMama]

8 hours ago, Quill said:

Well, I do think it’s weird that my lawyer boss is so prone to believing illogical and not evidence-based things. He was just telling me he 100% believes there is a known cure for “cancer” (Problem #1: Cancer is not one thing and is unlikely to ever have one cure), but that “They” are hushing it up because cancer treatment is lucrative. And this is a person who has lost a parent to a form of cancer. 🙄

ETA: I would think a lawyer of all professions would apply logic and see faulty arguments clearly. Guess not. 

The same argument exists for pretty much all terminal disease. There is secretly a cure for ALS too but... 👀 

 

As an aside, OP, I think people like to feel “in the know.” It is interesting to me the reception I’ve gotten about dyslexia from many teachers. They witness intelligent students have difficulty reading, but yet doubt there is a common cause or that there is a singular method (OG) that can fix it. Much of it is dissonance - as professionals, they can’t fix the problem and if there was a solution, clearly they wold be in the know. 
 

I’ve witnessed the same willingness to be smug in medical professions, among engineers, etc. 

They (rightfully) presume to be experts in their field and relying on deserved expertise can blind them to being open to ideas, solutions, suggestions in their own fields as things evolve. 

[Lucy the Valiant]

Not quite the same as brainwashing, but sometimes an expert in one field comes to think of himself as an expert in ALL fields. 

[gardenmom5]

This happens in all fields  - it's called existing in a bubble.

some people make an effort to pay attention/participate in things outside their employment/social bubble.

years ago, I read an article by a woman who had cross discipline interests (archeology and something else roman or greek).  She wasn't a professional - but because she had interests in BOTH fields, she put things together that neither individual professional side did because it wasn't' part of their bubble.

[kbutton]

4 hours ago, Katy said:

I both agree with you and... they're working with different definitions.  In English, the physicists are right.  They discovered influenza is actually airborne when I was in nursing school.  But in medical terms, airborne is a whole different classification of treatment. And if the CDC admitted it is airborne it would also have to admit we are woefully unprepared for airborne epidemics.  If I remember correctly, a certain classification of hospital (all the ones I've worked at) must have two rooms to treat airborne diseases per ward or floor. The ones I worked at had 4, all the rooms closest to the nurses station.  They're always used for known or suspected tuberculosis patients.  You use a respirator mask that also covers your eyes rather than an N95, and not just a gown but pants over your scrubs and a gown too, plus gloves.  The rooms have negative pressure so when you open the room air sucks in instead of blows out.

Technically we should have this for every Covid ward.  Some hospitals have set it up that way, but most use the same protocols you use for flu, plus a face guard.

I think the CDC looked at the fatality rate and decided Covid isn't TB, it IS worse than the flu, but we're definitely not looking at MERS, the version of coronavirus that killed 100% of people who got it.  If it was MERS they probably would have treated it more like ebola.

Glad you made this distinction. A lot of hospitals were using airborne protocols at first but changed when it became clear that PPE was short and that docs that were using droplet protocols were mostly doing fine (wathe has mentioned lucking out on this). 

[bookbard]

I'd agree that the only proper 'brainwashing' would be military, but that pretty much every field with specific knowledge turns out people who don't like that knowledge being questioned by outsiders. I've seen it across so many fields, from teachers and nutritionists to someone who'd run a store for years and laughed at the idea of someone 'educated' being able to do so (educated people can only cope with ivory towers, apparently). Within fields, too, there are the different areas of faith, like the ABA vs RDI in autism intervention and so on. 

[Melissa Louise]

No, though I've observed some professions run the risk of narrowing - a sort of inability to talk about other things/move too far from the profession. 

I'm sure within those professions, some individuals are more like that and some are less like it. 

[wathe]

5 hours ago, deBij said:

My doctor friends, who are also mothers, are scared of so many things, because they see so many bad outcomes.  It skewed their assessment of risks. 

 

When mentoring my kids for their future professions, long term mental health will be part of the discussion.

I don't know that I'd use the word "skewed", but definitely more aware of particular risks.  When you see the same patterns of injuries over and over, it does affect your behaviour.   We (my family) will never have a backyard trampoline, dirt bike, or motorcycle.  I don't think that's due to a skewed assessment of risk, but because those things actually are relatively dangerous and I see the same injury patterns over and over.  DH and I wear steel-toed boots when cutting the lawn, and bike helmets are non-negotiable for all family members while cycling.  Children are not permitted to use lawn mowers or snowblowers.  I am very careful when slicing round foods (avocados, bagels, separating frozen hamburger patties are big offenders).  We've all had our covid shots.  I don't think any of that is brainwashing. More a sensible response to lived experience.

[wathe]

3 hours ago, kbutton said:

Glad you made this distinction. A lot of hospitals were using airborne protocols at first but changed when it became clear that PPE was short and that docs that were using droplet protocols were mostly doing fine (wathe has mentioned lucking out on this). 

Yes.  Droplet protocols for 18 months.  Oodles of covid patients through.  Not a single outbreak in the ED.

There's airborne (TB, chickenpox, measles) and there's covid, which can be spread by aerosols sometimes, but seems to respect droplet precautions, at least in hospitals.

[Ausmumof3]

I figured to be fair to teachers I should add there can be a certain sort of brainwashing with homeschoolers/unschoolers as well.  Maybe brainwashing is not the right word. 

[wathe]

I don't think that medical people are brainwashed.  They share a professional culture and a body of knowledge.  That's not brainwashing: "a forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas".  If anything, my MD peeps are more committed to pro-social beliefs and attitudes that other groups.

 

[kbutton]

1 minute ago, wathe said:

I don't think that medical people are brainwashed.  They share a professional culture and a body of knowledge.  That's not brainwashing: "a forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas".  If anything, my MD peeps are more committed to pro-social beliefs and attitudes that other groups.

I don't like the brainwashing terminology, but I do find that some medical people get ossified in their knowledge--they latch onto an idea and don't give it up when twenty years later it turns out to be a mistaken assumption. BUT, I find this mostly to be a problem with more rare stuff. It's just that, in my family, we have rare stuff, so we run into this really bad information more often. Rare things that are genetic are not rare in families!

I also think we have pockets of places with access to care, but local attitudes of physicians are super paternalistic, etc., which leads to people not being willing to bring up complaints.

There are some areas where doctors are persistently misinformed, such as with aneurysms. I think it's changing, but it has taken outside advocacy groups putting pressure on medicine to change in this way. When we go to conferences, the stories we hear from cardiologists about the advice patients got before ending up with them curl my toenails. Even now though, some doctors read recommendations and do their best, but they don't realize that they are still having their patients get tested for things by people unfamiliar with what they are seeing, and then they don't realize the results aren't always being interpreted carefully. So, well-meaning doctors can still inadvertently give poor care because they don't realize that it takes an entire highly skilled team to the get the i's dotted and the t's crossed. 

But I don't like to discredit broadly since my DH is in healthcare and sees all kinds of good things too!

[J-rap]

I wouldn't call this brainwashing I don't think, but I read an interesting book by a Christian psychologist, but really addressing human nature across the board.  He talks about "principalities and powers" as being systems that take on a personality of their own -- apart from the people even.  (Obviously it begins with people, but at some point it evolves into the system personality.)  Those "personalities" are so convincing -- plus people naturally gravitate to being part of something that feels important, that people can be swept up into the whole culture and belief system of it without even realizing it. It could be a school, a church, a company, a club, a political party, a business, a profession...  so many things.

[wathe]

51 minutes ago, kbutton said:

I don't like the brainwashing terminology, but I do find that some medical people get ossified in their knowledge--they latch onto an idea and don't give it up when twenty years later it turns out to be a mistaken assumption. BUT, I find this mostly to be a problem with more rare stuff. It's just that, in my family, we have rare stuff, so we run into this really bad information more often. Rare things that are genetic are not rare in families!

I also think we have pockets of places with access to care, but local attitudes of physicians are super paternalistic, etc., which leads to people not being willing to bring up complaints.

There are some areas where doctors are persistently misinformed, such as with aneurysms. I think it's changing, but it has taken outside advocacy groups putting pressure on medicine to change in this way. When we go to conferences, the stories we hear from cardiologists about the advice patients got before ending up with them curl my toenails. Even now though, some doctors read recommendations and do their best, but they don't realize that they are still having their patients get tested for things by people unfamiliar with what they are seeing, and then they don't realize the results aren't always being interpreted carefully. So, well-meaning doctors can still inadvertently give poor care because they don't realize that it takes an entire highly skilled team to the get the i's dotted and the t's crossed. 

But I don't like to discredit broadly since my DH is in healthcare and sees all kinds of good things too!

Sure.  But the fact that it's impossible to be up to date on the best possible evidence for everything in all of medicine, particularly rare things, isn't brainwashing either.  It's being human.  I don't see anyone latching onto mistaken information and refusing to give it up.  Unaware of new guidelines, yes, but that's different than latching-on and refusing.

Slightly tangentially, a significant number of people think that MD's should know all about complementary and alternative medicine, and that they should be incorporating it into their practices.  I'm trained in western medicine.  C.A.M. is outside my training and outside my scope of practice.  That doesn't mean that I'm brainwashed. I means that I know what I don't know, and that  I know where my professional boundaries are.

[kbutton]

38 minutes ago, wathe said:

I don't see anyone latching onto mistaken information and refusing to give it up.  Unaware of new guidelines, yes, but that's different than latching-on and refusing.

Maybe not as individuals but as a whole, I very much get the impression that most doctors don't want to give up the idea that aneurysms are rare, and they seem difficult to persuade that they are familial. This is what I hear from experts in that field when we attend conferences as a family. These are cardiothoracic surgeons who are frustrated with other cardiologists! 

I've also watched an up-to-date geneticist skip over screening items in agreed upon standardized lists of what to look at while examining my child; same geneticist also mischaracterized one of his symptoms and 'splained it to me--I had to have another specialist reaffirm that we were correct and the geneticist was not looking at it correctly. Thank God that we had a solid family history and an echo to demonstrate a need for the actual genetic testing/diagnosis. If that exam had been the difference between getting additional testing and not getting it (and it would be in some practices), my son would probably be undiagnosed and untreated and have half the life-expectancy he has now because he was already borderline (he now shows my characteristics as he's aged, but we might not have followed up if he'd been cleared based on this exam). This particular tertiary center does the other testing somewhat simultaneously to be more "blind" to biased stuff, thank God, which is how we had an echo already in place for this exam to matter less. 

[ieta_cassiopeia]

Autism research seems to have a lot of indoctrination (note: definitely not brainwashing, but the title indicated both were acceptable). There's an expectation that whoever is leading any given autism research unit will have their core ideas accepted with as little challenge as its own research data permits, and in some cases even that is not accepted. This leads to entire units indoctrinating themselves in a way that proves stubbornly resistant to findings from other research units (that don't share the same ideology).

[Guest]

10 hours ago, wathe said:

I don't know that I'd use the word "skewed", but definitely more aware of particular risks.  When you see the same patterns of injuries over and over, it does affect your behaviour.   We (my family) will never have a backyard trampoline, dirt bike, or motorcycle.  I don't think that's due to a skewed assessment of risk, but because those things actually are relatively dangerous and I see the same injury patterns over and over.  DH and I wear steel-toed boots when cutting the lawn, and bike helmets are non-negotiable for all family members while cycling.  Children are not permitted to use lawn mowers or snowblowers.  I am very careful when slicing round foods (avocados, bagels, separating frozen hamburger patties are big offenders).  We've all had our covid shots.  I don't think any of that is brainwashing. More a sensible response to lived experience.

I think becoming more alert to particular issues that crop up in your field of work is very normal and extends to many types of work. If your dad is an auto mechanic, I’ll bet he nags you about changing oil and checking tires. 
 

I think about certain things in law that I didn’t used to think about: dying without a will, the importance of adequate insurance…and frankly, just how *very many* people jack up their lives because of alcohol and/or drugs. 

[*****]

Those in education for sure/ I have had first hand experience as a teacher who stayed home for 2 decades to homeschool my children, then returned to the public school system.  As a homeschooler, I was exposed to a variety of curriculum, child-led learning  and hands-on/project based learning, I went back into the system with a whole new way at looking at learning. For example, teachers often teach just what is in the math book, and don't give a second thought to the pre-skills kids should have, or even deviate to think how a lesson could be taught better, they just go with what is in the book.

Also, I raised my kids in the era when home computers and the internet were a new thing.  We didn't go to classes to learn how to navigate, we just learned it on our own. (I never knew there were names for things on Microsoft Word, such as Task Pane...)  Or when the school year of 2020 ended and I showed my administrator what I had used to teach online, (I support private schools so I have some flexibility)  she asked if I learned how to do it all on my own, Zoom and everything. I was shocked by that question, why of course, I thought. It dawned on me then that most educators take 'professional learning courses' to stay current on credentials.  Again, they/we are being fed with what administrators want us to teach. As homeschoolers, if we want to know something, we just jump in and discover it, don't we?!

Or the teaching of reading, how many times has the wheel been re-invented?  Educators jump on the bandwagon to whatever the new buzzword is.  I just shake my head... When I work in the public school system, I try to hang on to what I learned about learning as homeschoolers.  The testing shouldn't be the driving force, pure curiosity, reading real literature and the love of learning can work.  

[GracieJane]

Maslow‘s hammer is the cognitive bias that effects every profession („if you only have a hammer, you treat everything like a nail“). Most professionals have a narrow field of vision and it can look like brainwashing to outsiders. 

[Momto6inIN]

Every profession - heck, every group of humans, period - has this problem. Some people are aware of this phenomenon and are capable of evaluating themselves for bias in their way of looking at the world, of course, but that doesn't mean the basic propensity to see things from one narrow perspective doesn't exist in all people everywhere.

If you (general you) think that everyone else is indoctrinated and only you and the people that think like you are capable of critical thinking and escaping this phenomenon, think again.

[Shoeless]

I wouldn't call it brainwashing, but I've run into regional differences in how vet med is practiced. Veterinarians in each region are pretty stuck in their ways and not interested in hearing ideas from other places.