Keyboard, Come Forth!

@Lin Lan: I'm an editor at a publishing house in China. Through my work, I have access to a large collection of Soviet-era mathematics journals. I can state with confidence that all five Soviet Union sources cited in Qi Hao's paper are genuine academic publications.

I've attached the relevant evidence in the images and welcome fellow members of the academic community to verify it.

Lin Lan posted three images.

The first three were screenshots of PDF files. The middle three were photographs of a thick bound volume of journals, its cover worn white and the lettering on its spine barely legible. The last three were photocopies of the first pages of several other sources.

As soon as Lin Lan's Weibo post went up, a crowd of spectators quickly flooded the comments.

@Keyboard Warrior Himself: Listen, editor lady, all nine images you posted are in Russian. How many people here do you think can read Russian? How is this any different from posting nine images in Martian? Who knows whether these are academic papers or Russian cookbooks?

@Little Prince of Mathematics: Exactly. You say they're real, so they're real? Well, I say my family's got a manuscript by Euler passed down through generations. A few edits in Photoshop are all it takes to fake them. Who do you think you're fooling?

@Spectator Passing By: Sofa! Front-row seat! I can't read them, but I think something fishy is going on!

@Academic Fraud Fighter V: What a joke. You get someone from a publishing house to vouch for him and that settles it? Do publishing editors have more credibility than academic journals these days? Besides, who knows what this editor's relationship with Qi Hao is? Could she be a relative or friend helping him whitewash things?

@Rational Analysis Without Arguing: To be objective, even if these photos are real, they only prove that a few Russian-language journals exist. They don't prove that the contents correspond directly to the citations in Qi Hao's paper. After all, we can't read Russian.

@Russian Major Passing By: I'm a Russian major. I can more or less understand the title in the first image. It's about the extremal properties of finite graphs, but the main text is too specialized for me to understand those symbols.

@Righteous Bystander A: Russian major upstairs, are you sure you're not a shill?

The comments section quickly descended into a chaotic shouting match.

Wang Jun read the comments beside him, slapping his thigh in anger. "What's wrong with these people? The editor took photos of the actual journals and posted the PDFs too. How could they still be fake? They call them fake just because they can't read Russian? If you can't understand relativity, are you going to accuse Einstein of fraud too?"

Qi Hao felt the same way. The online haters had abandoned even basic logic, cursing him nonstop and even saying he'd hired shills!

He turned to glance at Wang Jun, who was spouting trash talk, and said, "Comrade Wang Jun, the people need you now. Hurry up and help Editor Lin Lan!"

"Watch me. I'll curse those sons of turtles to death!"

Lin Lan was no pushover either. She posted again.

@Lin Lan: I'm very disappointed after reading the comments. Since you're questioning whether the sources are genuine, let me add another fact. More than two months ago, after Qi Hao received a new book on Soviet Union mathematics published by our house, he spotted a critical problem in it in less than ten minutes.

Do you think someone who can pick out a critical error in a Soviet Union mathematics publication in ten minutes needs to fabricate a few Soviet Union sources to pad out his paper?

Or in your worldview, is anything beyond your understanding automatically fake?

The tone beneath this Weibo post shifted a little.

@Anonymous Mathematics Graduate Student: Holy crap, he spotted a mathematical error in ten minutes? Looks like Qi Hao's professional abilities are pretty solid.

@Publishing Industry Professional: I can confirm that reviewing and proofreading translated scientific and technical works really is highly specialized. An error that survived three rounds of proofreading must have been very well hidden. Finding it in ten minutes... all I can say is that this person's familiarity with the field is far beyond that of ordinary people!

@Little Prince of Mathematics: Heh, keep making stuff up. Who knows if they showed it to him beforehand and then put on a ten-minute act?

@Professional Skeptic of Everything: Exactly. Academics all hype each other up. Like hell I believe you.

@Keyboard Warrior Himself: Does this editor have some kind of py deal with Qi Hao? She's working awfully hard to whitewash things for him. doge.jpg

Lin Lan had clearly seen these comments too, because she replied instantly:

Reply to @Keyboard Warrior Himself: When someone does something you can't, your first reaction isn't to acknowledge their ability, but to suspect them of cheating. With an attitude like that, I suggest you book an appointment at the Fourth Hospital and get checked for mental illness!

@Spectator Number One: Hahaha, editor sis is so tough!

Li Hui watched for a while, his blood surging. "I'm joining in too! If nobody curses these dumbasses out, they won't know how dangerous society is! Junzi, let's team up on the computers. We can type faster!"

"Right away! Keyboard, come forth!"

Wang Jun had just switched to the computer when he noticed something was off. "Our school's official Weibo... updated?"

"What?"

The official Weibo account of Rongcheng's University of Electronic Science and Technology of China had been registered for almost six months. Before this, it had posted only three times: a test post on the day it registered, a notice about last year's school anniversary, and a repost of a Ministry of Education document.

It was basically a zombie account.

Yet just three minutes ago, this official account, which had hardly ever been active, had suddenly published a long Weibo post.

@Rongcheng Radio and Television University V:

[Statement Regarding the Citation Controversy Surrounding the Paper by Our Student Qi Hao]

Recently, a paper published in "Discrete Mathematics" by a student in our mathematics and applied mathematics program sparked an online controversy over its cited sources.

Professor Alexei Kozlov of the Department of Mathematics at New York State University at Stony Brook in the United States took the initiative to contact us. As a researcher in the same field, Professor Alexei confirmed that all five Soviet Union-era sources cited in the paper were genuine academic publications and that the citation information was accurate.

With Professor Alexei's authorization and consent, we are now publishing the original email he sent to our university's academic committee, along with the electronic copies of the sources he attached.

Netizens who read this could no longer stay calm.

"Am I seeing this right? The school's official account spoke up? And it brought a United States professor along with it?"

"Wait, let me think. New York State University at Stony Brook in the United States... isn't that the school that's insanely good at physics and mathematics, where old Mr. Yang Zhenning worked?!"

"Even tenured professors in the American empire are getting involved in our domestic academic disputes these days? That's one heck of a distance to cross. I'm worried Professor Alexei's internet cable might get stuck at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean when he goes online!"

For a time, their discussion focused entirely on one central question that left everyone utterly baffled.

Why would a United States university professor from across the ocean take the initiative to step forward and vouch for a Huaguo student's paper?

In an era when the vast majority of ordinary netizens considered even a trip abroad a rare occurrence, let alone studying across the ocean, ordinary people saw not just professors at prestigious United States universities but even ordinary foreign teachers as figures hanging high in the heavens.

How had someone of that stature appeared?!

They could rack their brains and never guess that Professor Alexei was the second reviewer of Qi Hao's paper!

Of course, Professor Alexei would never reveal his identity himself.

It was a blind review, after all. Who besides the editor would know he was the reviewer?

A paper he had reviewed was actually being questioned. That was questioning him personally!

What was more, he had another reason he had to step forward.