I Agree

A temporary meeting was convened in the conference room at Jinling University, personally chaired by President Xu Jian. The leaders of the Software Institute were required to attend.

Quite a few professors had been in their labs when a phone call summoned them to the meeting.

The focus of the meeting was simple: to discuss an article causing a huge uproar on Weibo—"A Brief Discussion of the Academic Climate on Hua Nation's Modern Campuses: Starting with an Undergraduate's Papers."

The article mentioned that an undergraduate had published nine computer science SCI papers in a single month. Using that as its starting point, it criticized the academic climate at Hua Nation's universities, accused a certain journal of lax review standards, and specifically named Jin University as the undergraduate's school.

It was practically roasting Jin University over an open fire.

During the meeting, an elderly professor from the Software Institute adjusted his glasses, rose to his feet, and said evenly, "...I've read those nine papers. They're actually quite well written. It isn't easy for an undergraduate to produce papers like that. Calling them filler publications is really a stretch—many submissions to computer science journals aren't even as good as his. That Zhu Fangcai... educational commentator probably doesn't understand information technology at all. Maybe if we communicate with him and point out his mistakes, we can get him to delete that post."

Could publishing too many papers actually make people dislike you?

Many of the professors were full of confusion. This meeting had been called for no apparent reason!

"That's unrealistic... Does Zhu Fangcai not know how much he actually knows? Look at his titles: educational commentator, popular science writer. Which one of those sounds like someone who speaks our language?" The Party secretary seated at the conference table shook his head. "He's clearly here to stir up trouble. Why would he negotiate with you?"

This matter really was difficult to handle.

First, the student had done nothing wrong. Even if they took ten thousand steps back, the school could not possibly punish him. Yet public opinion had formed into a one-sided condemnation.

And the whole thing was rather laughable when one thought about it. It was entirely an outsider taking advantage of his social standing to point fingers.

As for the motive, even the school leaders could not make sense of it.

Fortunately, it was not a month earlier, during the period for submitting university preferences. Otherwise, everyone present would have been cursing their heads off.

But no matter what, this matter had already seriously damaged the school's reputation!

President Xu's expression was not pleasant. After remaining silent for about half a minute, he slowly said, "The issue now is not whether the papers are good or not. It is that all sectors of society have begun questioning our school's academic climate. Our top priority is to answer those doubts and clarify the matter to the public. At the same time, we must find out what exactly happened!"

After an afternoon of discussion, the meeting ultimately made two decisions.

On one hand, to protect the school's reputation, they would conduct public relations efforts regarding the public response caused by the blog post, release an announcement clarifying the papers' academic value, and send a lawyer's letter demanding an apology. On the other hand, the leaders of every department were instructed to find this undergraduate surnamed Lu and determine exactly what was going on.

Nine SCI papers in one month—just one short of double digits. It did sound a little surreal. The Software Institute professors present had all padded their publication records before. After all, computer science papers had real value behind them. But none of them had ever padded them this crazily!

However, the school leaders still did not know that Lu Zhou had actually published ten papers. The other one simply was not in computer science, but mathematics...

Weibo, comment section.

[Holy shit, an undergraduate published nine SCI papers? Who are you trying to fool? Are those things really that easy to publish?]

[...I feel like I could do it too. (doge)]

[Support Teacher Zhu! Crush academic cancers! Correct this unhealthy trend! (fist) (fist)]

[As an international student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I can say that something like this would be absolutely impossible in the United States. No need to think about it—the submitter must have exploited loopholes in the fake review mechanisms of some domestic general journals...]

[Pathetic. What kind of students are our universities producing? What use are researchers who can only write papers? Can papers turn into atomic bombs? Even undergraduates can write so many of them! It is obvious that our nation's academic world is already terminally ill...]

[Give it a rest with the whitewashing. Try writing nine papers in a month yourself. If you can't do it, stop yapping from the sidelines.]

What the fuck was this crap?

Wasn't there even one comment from someone with a functioning brain who was on his side?

Twenty thousand reposts, ten thousand comments, and countless likes!

Sitting in an empty classroom and scrolling through Weibo, Lu Zhou grew angrier the more he read, yet there was nothing he could do.

People did not actually care what the truth was. They only ever wanted to see what they wanted to see.

For example, authority being toppled, "products of exam-oriented education" being brought down, scientific giants supposedly hidden among ordinary people, the "hypocritical" veil of academia being torn away... As for whether the papers were really as worthless as that Zhu fellow claimed, how many people would actually look at them with their own eyes?

There were none.

Lu Zhou had even registered a Weibo account specifically to argue with the trolls. In the end, his comments as the person involved vanished without a trace, without even a single like.

Maybe that was the sorrow of being an invisible nobody on Weibo...

After silently reminding himself several times to stay calm, Lu Zhou switched off his phone screen as usual and ran a hand through his hair.

He had thought he had chosen the simplest task, only to discover such a huge pit hidden inside it.

It was partly his own oversight. If he had used a pseudonym when publishing the papers, no one would have noticed at all. But things had already reached this point, and regret was useless.

Just then, his phone rang.

When he picked it up, he saw that Old Tang was calling.

Lu Zhou's expression turned strange. He truly could not think of any reason Old Tang would be looking for him. Could it be related to the papers?

Probably not, right?

With uncertainty in his heart, Lu Zhou answered the call.

"Hello?"

"Little Lu, what are you up to?"

Old Tang sounded fairly calm. Lu Zhou steadied himself and said, "Studying in a classroom... Is something wrong?"

Professor Tang paused for a moment before continuing, "If it's convenient, come to my office."

"Now?"

"Yes, right now."

After packing up, Lu Zhou slung his computer and books over his shoulder and headed straight to Professor Tang's office.

When he entered, he found that Director Lu from the Applied Mathematics Department and Director Zhang from the Computer Science Department were also there.

The three professors looked at Lu Zhou as he entered and smiled at first. Then their expressions became somewhat subtle as they exchanged glances, communicating with their eyes. Finally, Professor Tang sighed and got straight to the point. "Lu Zhou, I want to ask you something."

"Go ahead, Professor."

Professor Tang continued, "Some time ago... after you published that mathematics paper, did you submit anything to SCI journals?"

Knowing he probably could not hide it, Lu Zhou sighed inwardly and answered honestly, "I did."

Director Zhang looked toward Director Lu beside him and said helplessly, "Just as expected... When I heard the surname Lu, I figured there weren't many students named Lu in our department. We asked them one by one. Forget writing papers—they didn't even know how to submit one."

Professor Tang became anxious and asked again, unwilling to believe it. "The papers you published were mathematics papers, right?"

"They were..." Lu Zhou nodded obediently, then added in a low voice, "But I also published some other papers... on Artificial Intelligence and Geographic Information System."

Professor Tang's eyes nearly popped out. "You... Why did you go and publish computer science papers too? Weren't you researching some Mersenne prime thing a few days ago?"

"I found that the journal paid for submissions—around 150 per paper," Lu Zhou said quietly, glancing at Professor Tang with embarrassment. "So I split what I'd researched into nine parts, wrote them up as papers, and published them... Was that not okay?"

Professor Tang: "..."

Director Lu: "..."

Director Zhang: "..."

Was there a problem?

Of course there was not. The school encouraged students to publish more papers. Publishing papers for the submission fees sounded strange, but it was not necessarily a bad thing...

But this time, it had somehow become a problem.

A baffling silence settled over the office. Finally, Director Lu cleared his throat and asked in a friendly tone, "Um... Student Lu, did you write those papers yourself?"

"Of course." Lu Zhou nodded. "And I wrote them in the library."

He had not lied about that. Simply redeeming the papers from the system was not enough. If he did not understand the knowledge in them himself, he would never have been able to expand them into complete papers. At most, he could have copied down the algorithms.

To complete those papers, he had read more than a hundred references, not to mention all the specialized books.

So forget checking surveillance footage—even if they questioned him on the spot about several issues concerning Artificial Intelligence and GIS systems, he could answer fluently.

Of course, if they asked questions beyond his range, such as Artificial Intelligence applications in other fields, things might become a little difficult. But with the system, redeeming the knowledge with points on the spot would not be hard. At worst, he would waste a few points...

Now even Director Lu did not know what to say. In the end, Director Zhang from the Software Institute stepped forward, smiled, and said, "Director Lu didn't mean anything else. We just never expected that you would not only be so capable in mathematics, but also have such deep insights into information technology. I saw your C language grade. Ninety-five is already very good. Of course we believe you wrote the papers yourself... But some people don't believe it, and they've used this matter to make trouble. Have you been on Weibo?"

Although most Artificial Intelligence was written in C++, C language exam scores did not really have any direct connection to Artificial Intelligence. Other than teaching some basic C++ usage, instructors simply did not teach anything advanced.

But looking at it from the other direction, someone capable of writing papers like those could not possibly perform badly in something as fundamental as a C language exam. A score of ninety-five was within Director Zhang's expectations.

"You mean that article?" Lu Zhou asked.

"Yes." Director Zhang stared into Lu Zhou's eyes and nodded. "You've already seen it?"

"I have." Though he was furious inside, he still had to maintain his composure before others. Lu Zhou waved a hand and put on an unconcerned expression. "It's the kind of thing that mindlessly smears people from beginning to end. I can't even be bothered to argue with him."

Though as he said it, he wanted nothing more than to chop that man in half with a single stroke.

"Student Lu, I must correct you on one point." Director Lu looked at Lu Zhou seriously. "You are not merely an individual. You are a student of our school, and you represent our school's reputation! We will not tolerate unethical academic conduct, nor will we allow anyone to maliciously smear our students. I hope you will correct your attitude and take this matter seriously."

"Director Lu, but there's nothing I can do, is there? I sent him private messages, but he ignored me completely." Lu Zhou sounded helpless.

"Director Lu doesn't mean anything else. He just hopes you won't be so passive about this," Director Zhang said in a gentler tone. "The school will make a public response regarding the public opinion issue. We simply hope that you can cooperate with us and speak up for yourself—and for the school—at an appropriate time. Can you do that?"

So they wanted to stand up for me...

I thought it was something else. They should've said so sooner!

Lu Zhou breathed a sigh of relief and nodded.

"I agree!"