What spirit do contemporary young researchers need？

　　120 years ago, Mr. Liang Qichao wrote "On Young China", in which it was stated that "old people often think about the past, while young people often think about the future", and "the responsibility for today lies not with others, but with my youth. Young people’s wisdom makes the country wise, and young people’s wealth makes the country rich; If a teenager is strong, the country will be strong, and if a teenager is independent, the country will be independent; Juvenile freedom means national freedom; Juvenile progress leads to national progress; If teenagers are better than Europe, then China is better than Europe; If a teenager is superior to the earth, then the country is superior to the earth. " Every time I read here, I feel deeply that the strength of a country’s scientific and technological strength is mainly determined by young researchers. Young researchers are strong, while China’s scientific and technological strength is strong. It coincides with another Youth Day, and I think contemporary young researchers should have the following "May 4th Spirit".

　　First of all, young researchers should have the spirit of exploring future science. Many young people think that doing scientific research means writing papers, so the research direction that is easy to publish academic papers has become a hot direction. Especially in the past few years, everyone competed for the "SCI Journal Impact Factor". People who do engineering cross the border to do materials science, people who do materials science cross the border to do chemistry, and people who do chemistry cross the border to do life science. These people can improve the "impact factor data" of their papers, and make no contribution to the future development of their own scientific fields. At the same time, they think they have done first-class work across borders, but they don’t know that these jobs are meaningless in the eyes of researchers in those fields. Young researchers should be full of the spirit of exploring future science. Therefore, we must know that the current hot issues are not necessarily the direction of future science, but many future scientific directions may be completely unpopular now. Therefore, I strongly disagree with the "cross-border" development model of university researchers. Of course, many researchers are now aware of the harm of doing scientific research to the development of disciplines. Therefore, young researchers can’t simply play with "impact factor data", but should base themselves on their own research fields, think about future scientific problems worth exploring in their fields, and be people who can lead the development of their disciplines.

　　Second, young researchers should be full of positive and innovative spirit. Many doctoral students suddenly feel confused when they grow into young researchers. They don’t know how to carry out scientific research. If it is just a continuation of the research project during the doctoral period, it has been done for four or five years before, and the innovative content inside has been done almost. If you do a job that you are not familiar with, you are worried that you can’t do it. I know some teachers who are still doing what they did 10 years ago and can continue to publish some academic papers. To say it well means to do it "extremely deeply", and to say it badly means to "eat one’s laurels" I think a university researcher should make minor changes in scientific research every five years and make great changes every ten years. Only in this way can he continue to do innovative work. Many people think that young researchers don’t have a large team, so they can’t make outstanding innovative achievements. Actually, this understanding is wrong. A lot of research shows that the teams that can really do subversive and innovative work are often small scientific research teams, while those big teams generally just do "step by step" work. Therefore, when the team of young researchers is not particularly large, everyone can brainstorm and perhaps really do subversive and innovative work.

　　Third, young researchers should be critical and dare to challenge authority. There is a very bad phenomenon in the academic circle now. Some young researchers are very thoughtful and creative, but when their work can’t be recognized by "authoritative people", they will immediately feel that they are doing something wrong instead of standing up and challenging these authoritative people. Many times, they make some research results, and if they find that their results are inconsistent with the papers published in academic journals, they will feel that they have done something wrong. What they lack is to challenge authoritative views and inherent knowledge with critical thinking. Many times it is because they dare not challenge authority that they miss some important achievements. Personally, it is a virtue to respect teachers and respect morality, but on the road of scientific research, the critical scientific research spirit of young people is even more commendable. Nowadays, people are very much in pursuit of the top journals such as Nature and Science. When they find that these journals have published some achievements, they think it is right without thinking, and follow the trend to do some research, even if their results are completely different from the conclusions of these journals, they dare not challenge them. Last year, the media reported the fraudulent case of Piero Anversa, a professor at Harvard University, who studied heart stem cells. I believe that the results made by most young scholars in China must be completely contrary to Piero Anversa’s conclusion. However, they passively "think they are wrong" because the other party is a "well-known professor at Harvard University" and their papers are published in top journals such as Nature and Science.Eventually it became a joke in academic circles. If they dare to criticize authoritative people and challenge the opinions of authoritative journals, the development of things may be completely different, so the spirit of daring to criticize and challenge authority is a valuable spirit that young researchers should be rich in.

　　Finally, young researchers should have the spirit of "advancing with the times". Now that the country is vigorously promoting "breaking the four virtues", we should respond to this good call and do some scientific research work that can truly "stand on the ground", instead of simply chasing the wind, pursuing the number of papers published, pursuing high impact factors and pursuing high citation times. We should make the research work of our own disciplines thorough and systematic, really dig out scientific principles through phenomena, and provide knowledge reserves for China’s future industrial upgrading. When one day we are old and look back on the scientific research we have been engaged in all our lives, if there is one thing that has left an impact on the lives of future generations, I think there will be no regrets in this life.

　　（ http://blog.sciencenet.cn/u/yuhailiang）