btmnovel Chapter 1416 Flattery
Chapter 1416 Flattery
Chapter 1416 Flattery
After Mannstein's laboratory moved to Nandu, Yang Ping's life underwent two significant changes.
The first change is that lunchtime in the cafeteria has become longer. Before, he ate alone, finishing in ten minutes while looking at his phone. Now, that's impossible; there are eight Germans and one Swiss, and everyone has questions. Clara asked about the details of data processing algorithms, Hans asked about statistical methods and clinical translation pathways, and Mainstein asked about everything from off-target effects of gene editing to where to buy authentic German sausages in Nanfang Daily.
The second change was the unpredictability of weekends. Saturdays were supposed to be for rest, but Germans defined "rest" in a strange way. They could spend the entire day in the lab, doing experiments while simultaneously resting. Yang Ping tried to persuade them twice, but finding it futile, he gave up. He simply showed up every Saturday afternoon to take them out for different things to eat. Hunan cuisine, Sichuan cuisine, hot pot, kebabs, dim sum, rice noodle rolls, clay pot rice—according to Mainstein, "Professor Yang is conducting a gentle cultural invasion of us through food."
“This is not aggression,” Yang Ping said. “It is cultural exchange.”
“What’s the difference?” Mainstein asked.
"Aggression is something you have to eat even if you don't want to, while exchange is something you want to eat even after you've eaten."
Mannstein thought about it and agreed, so he added another bowl of rice.
This went on for about a month, and everyone assumed it would continue peacefully—doing experiments, writing papers, eating, and then doing more experiments. Until that Friday afternoon, an email shattered all the peace.
Mannstein's paper was completed.
He compiled twenty-three weeks' worth of data into a complete paper. The title was simple, without exclamation marks, words like "breakthrough," "first," or "revolutionary"—just a single, straightforward sentence:
"Research on Primate Spinal Cord Injury Repair Based on Three-Dimensional Guided Gene Theory"
The night Yang Ping finished reading the first draft, he sent a message to Mainstein: "Where should I submit it?"
Yang Ping was taken aback by Mainstein's reply: "Medicine".
"Medicine" is a journal edited by Yang Ping. This journal has only been published for a few years, and its academic standing is far inferior to that of "Nature Medicine." Although Yang Ping, through his academic reputation and rigorous standards, has enabled "Medicine" to enter the SCI citations in a short period, and its impact factor is steadily rising, the gap compared to "Nature" sub-journals is still significant.
"Are you sure?" Yang Ping replied, "Nature Medicine would be more suitable, as it has a greater influence and the review process is faster."
Mannstein's reply was very long, as if he had typed it out word by word on a phone for a long time:
“Professor, I’ve considered it. With the weight of this data, it would definitely be accepted by Nature Medicine, and probably very quickly. But that’s not what I want. The roots of this theory are in China, with you. I want it published in a journal edited by Chinese people. This isn’t just politeness; it’s a matter of principle. And I want the whole world to know about this Chinese journal.”
Yang Ping stared at the message for a long time without replying.
His initial motivation for editing *Medicine* was simple: good work done by Chinese scholars shouldn't always have to be published abroad. China needs a high-level platform with international influence. But this is incredibly difficult. Good papers tend to go to top international journals, while domestic journals often only receive second- or third-rate work. This is a vicious cycle, and it's a reality.
Mannstein's willingness to submit this paper to *Medicine* was a gamble. For Mannstein, it was an academic risk; for Yang Ping, it was a sign of trust.
“Okay!” Yang Ping finally replied, “but I have one condition.”
"What conditions?"
"Submit this paper to *Medicine*. Your data is enough for more than one paper. Write a separate paper on the mechanism research and submit it to *Nature Medicine*. That way, you won't be neglecting either one."
Mannstein replied after a long pause: "Professor, are you teaching me academic strategies?"
“I’m teaching you a lesson. You can’t sacrifice your own academic influence to support my journal. Publish both papers, keep the main paper with me, and publish the derivative papers in top journals. That’s the optimal solution.”
This time, Mainstein replied quickly: "Professor, you can be really annoying sometimes."
"I know."
"But you're right, I'll write it."
A week later, Yang Ping received two papers in his email.
The first paper, as displayed in the journal's submission system, was titled: "A Study on Spinal Cord Injury Repair in Primates Based on the Three-Dimensional Guided Gene Theory." The author list was long, with Mainstein as the first author and corresponding author, followed by Clara, Hans, Fritz, and several core members of Yang Ping's research group. The acknowledgments section contained only one sentence: "Dedicated to all those who do not believe in 'impossible'."
The second draft, sent by Mainstein to Yang Ping's private email, was titled: "Unexpected Effects of Non-Targeted Gene Regulation on Spinal Cord Injury Repair in Primates." This was a purely mechanistic study, exploring the unexpected recovery of the monkey in the non-targeted intervention group—the one Mainstein named "Surprise" M21.
"Professor, I plan to submit my second paper to Nature Medicine."
Yang Ping looked at the email and smiled. Einstein was sometimes so stubborn you wanted to knock him on the head, but within that stubbornness lay a clean, almost naive, integrity.
"Okay, let's vote."
Mannstein replied with an OK emoji.
The peer review process for Nature Medicine was very quick.
Four weeks after submission, Mainstein announced at a group meeting: "Nature Medicine is back, and it doesn't even need minor revisions."
The entire lab erupted in cheers. Mainstein raised his hands as if he'd just scored a goal. Clara let out a scream, then covered her mouth in embarrassment. Hans laughed like a 200-pound child, even though he always had been 200 pounds.
After the cheers from Mannstein and others subsided, he added, "But the peer review process for 'Medicine' will have to wait a little longer."
Yang Ping remained silent. He knew the peer review process for *Medicine*. The current reviewer pool wasn't large enough, making it difficult to find suitable reviewers, which naturally lengthened the review process. This was a common problem for all new journals; it couldn't be rushed.
The peer review for the medical journal finally came back in the sixth week.
It was a Tuesday, a rare sunny day in Southern Metropolis Daily. Yang Ping was in his office reviewing a grant application when his phone vibrated—an automatic notification from the submission system. He opened the email and glanced at the conclusion:
“Major revision required.”
Major overhaul.
Yang Ping's expression remained unchanged. He continued reading the grant application, wrote a section of revision suggestions for the applicant, and only then opened the appendix containing the reviewers' comments.
Two reviewers.
The first reviewer, from a top university in China, wrote a full three pages. The opening was affirmative—"This is a landmark study"—followed by a long list of questions. Sample size, statistical methods, control settings, mechanistic evidence, long-term follow-up data… each question was highly professional and hit the nail on the head.
The second reviewer, an anonymous international reviewer, wrote in fluent English, suggesting a native speaker. It was only one page long, but Yang Ping read the last sentence twice:
In other words, you say your work is based on the three-dimensional guided gene theory, but the connection between the theory and the experimental results is not clearly explained.
Yang Ping closed his laptop, leaned back in his chair, and thought for a long time.
Mainstein was sitting in front of the microscope when he heard footsteps and looked up. He saw Yang Ping's expression, said nothing, but simply offered the microscope to Yang Ping, gesturing for him to sit down.
"No need," Yang Ping said. "The reviewers' comments have come back."
"Major overhaul or minor repair?"
"Major overhaul!"
Mainstein's expression remained unchanged, but Yang Ping noticed that his fingers, which were resting on the table, tightened slightly.
"There were two reviewers, one from China, who was very professional and asked very practical questions. The other from abroad said that the connection between our theory and data was not clear enough."
Mannstein was silent for a few seconds. “You’re all right,” he said.
Yang Ping looked at him.
Mainstein stood up and walked to the whiteboard: "I've always known about this problem, Professor. Your theory is about how cells perceive their position in three-dimensional space and make correct behavioral decisions based on that positional information. But my experiment used gene regulation. The logical chain between the two is: gene regulation → microenvironmental change → cell positional awareness restored → axonal regeneration and connection → functional recovery. There are three arrows in the middle, and I've only proven the first and last one. I don't have direct evidence for the two middle arrows."
Yang Ping walked to the whiteboard, picked up a pen, and drew a line under the line that Mainstein had written.
"Let me prove the existence of the two arrows in the middle."
Mannstein turned his head and looked at Yang Ping.
"Are you sure, Professor? This isn't your experiment. This is mine."
"I'd call it voluntary work," Yang Ping said. "The theory is mine, the experiment is yours. The two arrows in the middle are the bridge between theory and experiment. I'll write the theoretical framework, and you'll fill in the experimental evidence. We'll reply to the reviewers within a week."
Mainstein looked at Yang Ping, opened his mouth as if to say something, but in the end only said one word: "Okay!"
The next seven days were the craziest seven days Yang Ping had ever seen.
Mainstein divided the team into three groups. The first group was responsible for supplementary experiments—using histological methods to directly prove that axon regeneration was indeed guided by three-dimensional guiding signals. The second group was responsible for in-depth analysis of the "unresponsive" monkey; Fritz retrieved all tissue samples from the monkey in the animal facility, Clara performed whole-genome sequencing, and Hans conducted 172 pages of data analysis. The third group was responsible for new control experiments, using non-targeted gene editing as a negative control to eliminate the interference of off-target effects.
Mannstein himself switched between three groups simultaneously. He spent his mornings watching monkeys in the animal room, his afternoons conducting molecular experiments in the lab, his afternoons writing replies in his office, and his evenings discussing every single peer review comment with Yang Ping on the phone.
Yang Ping wasn't idle either. He reorganized the core propositions of the three-dimensional guided gene theory and incorporated them into the theoretical framework of his paper in a clearer and more direct way. He wasn't just patching things up; he was rebuilding it. The theoretical part of the previous paper was like a draft; this one was like a final draft—cleaner, sharper, and more powerful.
On the third day, Clara discovered an anomaly in the genome of the "unresponsive" animal.
“Cas9’s off-target effect,” she said at the group meeting, her voice trembling slightly. “It caused an insertion mutation at a non-target site in the genome, and this mutation just happened to affect a gene related to neuronal survival. This may be the reason why it did not recover; it’s not that the method was ineffective, but that the gene editing went wrong.”
The meeting room was quiet for a while.
"Is this good news or bad news?" someone asked.
"It's all there is to it," Mannstein said. "The bad news is that our gene editing isn't precise enough, and off-target effects may be more common than expected. The good news is that the occurrence of unresponsive individuals isn't due to a flaw in the method itself, but rather a technical problem in the execution process. This means that if we can improve the precision of gene editing, the response rate could potentially increase further."
He looked at Yang Ping.
Yang Ping nodded: "This discovery is very important. When replying to the reviewers, we should include it. Honestly state the problem, honestly analyze the reasons, and honestly propose improvement plans. Honesty is the first quality of science."
On the sixth day, Yang Ping finished writing the theoretical framework. Instead of sending it to Mainstein, he printed it out and went to the laboratory on the west side of the institute, placing it on Mainstein's desk.
Mannstein picked it up, read the first paragraph, then looked up at Yang Ping. He read the second paragraph, put the paper down, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes.
"Professor, you used to study literature?"
"I'm studying medicine."
"You shouldn't study medicine; you should study literature. The theoretical framework you wrote is ten times more beautiful than mine."
"You've learned how to flatter?" Yang Ping said. "I need you to tell me if I've written it wrong."
Mannstein put his glasses back on, read the paper from beginning to end, and then placed it on the table, looking at Yang Ping.
“There are no mistakes, every single word is correct. It’s not just correct, it’s… I don’t know how to describe it… it’s that feeling of ‘it should be this way.’ It’s as if these words aren’t written by you, but by the theory itself speaking.”
Yang Ping leaned back in his chair: "Stop flattering me!"
"I'm just stating the facts. I don't even know what flattery is," Mainstein shrugged.
On the seventh day, the reply was completed.
Forty-seven pages, longer than the paper itself. It addressed every single question from the reviewers, attaching supplementary experimental data, new analytical results, and revised figures and tables. The tone was neither humble nor arrogant; acknowledging what needed to be acknowledged, defending what needed to be defended, and supplementing what needed to be supplemented.
Mannstein added a sentence on the last page of his reply:
"We appreciate the thoughtful and constructive comments from the reviewers, which significantly improved the quality of this paper. In particular, the comment that we should clarify the relationship between the three-dimensional guide gene theory and the experimental results prompted us to elaborate on the theoretical framework more deeply and rigorously. We believe that the revised paper now demonstrates more clearly and powerfully how to achieve guide axon regeneration in the primate spinal cord."
When Yang Ping read this passage, the corners of his mouth turned up slightly. This passage was written by Mannstein himself and had not been shown to Yang Ping. He was saying "Thank you, reviewers," but what he was really saying was, "You're right, we've improved, and it's even better now." It was a kind of old-fashioned, European-style politeness, beneath which lay a confident yet humble demeanor.
Yang Ping said, "Okay, go ahead and throw!"
Mannstein held the mouse, the cursor hovering over the "Submit" button, but didn't click it.
"Professor, you said that Nature Medicine has already approved it and it will be published soon. However, Nature Medicine is still undergoing major revisions. Is there a possibility that the derivative paper will be published first, and the main paper will be published later?"
"meeting!"
"Won't others find it strange? Why were more important results published in a journal with a smaller impact?"
Yang Ping looked at him.
"What do you think?"
"It doesn't matter," Mannstein said. "What matters is that the right paper is published in the right journal. Time will tell about the impact."
He clicked "Submit".
A green checkmark appeared on the screen, followed by the message: "Your revision has been submitted successfully."
Mannstein leaned back in his chair and let out a long sigh.
"Professor, you know what? This is the craziest academic decision I've ever made."
"Submit the main paper to 'Medicine'?"
“No!” Mainstein said, “It’s because I didn’t ask you to revise the theoretical framework before submitting the manuscript; the first version you wrote was already the final version.”
Yang Ping laughed, not just a polite laugh, but a genuine laugh.
"You've really learned how to flatter people, isn't that a good thing?"
"I don't even know what flattery is."
The two looked at each other and smiled.