Comment by black_knight

> I think everyone who enters academia goes through this phase of disillusionment. This thing you revered so much as this temple of knowledge turns out to involve the same kind of human business you see anywhere else

My experience and disillusionment is different from yours. I was inspired to do research from nerdy blog posts from researchers in my field. And my experience has mostly been that people in my field are honest, hard working, genuinely interested in doing their research as well as possible – mostly to satisfy their curiosity and sharing their findings with others. Any disillusion I have experienced has been about the fact that doing research is more or less something they squeeze in between teaching, applying for money and administrative tasks.