Many young researchers gradually get discouraged by some facts of being a researcher: low salary, fuzzy seperation of life and work, publish or perish, etc. We yet have not been told enough why it is a privilege to be a researcher. This post will use scientific literature to share with you some encouraging statements from established researchers.

A researcher is paid to read

"One of the profound privileges of being a professor is having the opportunity to read in self-selected areas of interest. What a luxury to be paid, often from tax money, to read and think, to be among the world’s paid literati, sometimes with the security of tenure." [2]


Be alerted
Different from the illiterature, who does not know how to read and write, the term of aliterates is used to describe people who know how, but choose not to read [1]. "Choosing not to read is a choice that produces a public that is not well informed or capable of the critical thinking needed as a foundation for voting; the entire transcript of a televised newscast would fill only about two columns in the New York Times." [2]


  1. Wallendorf, M. (2001). Literally Literacy. Journal of Consumer Research, 27(4), 505–511. https://doi.org/10.1086/319625
  2. Healy, J. M. (1999). Endangered Minds: Why Children Don’t Think And What We Can Do About It (1st edition). Simon & Schuster.



最后修改: 2022年11月17日 星期四 17:26