I read all the time, research papers included. What I discovered is that when I arm tired in the afternoons I can read and reread a paper and not really understand much, but if I read a paper first thing in the morning I never have to reread it for understanding.
knowing how to read ("knowing your letters") is not literacy. from an academic perspective the majority of the population is illiterate.
Ordinary language is highly ambiguous, so specific domains have to use words that have been disambiguated for the domain so that people inside the domain can clearly communicate with each other.
Two chemist aren't doing performance art talking to each other because I am uneducated in chemistry so can't follow the conversation.