Hoshi Yuichiro, Yamashita, and everyone else in the office were stunned.
Not just that, but shortly after the video was uploaded to his personal blog, the entire Japanese academic community was blown up.
Like all people expected, Shinichi Mochizuki stood up and responded to the removal of the paper from his personal blog and the homepage of the department of mathematics.
However, the response was not what people wanted to hear.
In some sense, the Japanese academic community was relatively closed off compared to the international academic community.
This was not reflected in the academic exchange itself, but the entire Japanese academic community was permeated with a xenophobic atmosphere dominated by extremely confident emotions.
Simply put, they were not targeting anyone, but subconsciously, they felt that all foreign scholars were rubbish, and no country was special.
This kind of xenophobic culture rooted in the subconscious made it difficult for foreign scholars to integrate into them. Japanese scholars were rarely willing to actively integrate into the world. Of the 22 Japanese Nobel Prize winners in materials, chemistry, and physics, none of them worked overseas.
If domestic scholars were questioned by foreign scholars, unless there was hard evidence in front of them, in the eyes of the Japanese academic community, the rest of the world was the ones that were wrong.
They rarely apologized.
Because of this, as opposed to the “academic fraud” or the “scandal” itself, the Japanese academic community felt more humiliated by the mistake being discovered in the first place.
This was obvious from the top ten list in Retraction Watch.
Among the top ten leaders, four of them were Japanese scholars.
Especially Yoshitaka Fujii, who was ranked number one. He was infamous in the academic world. From his doctoral degree in 1991 to the Dongchuang incident in 2012, he had published 212 papers, of which 183 contained falsified data.
This meant that he alone occupied 7% of the total number of retracted articles from 1980 to 2011, which caused an uproar at the time.
Even the investigation committee of the Ministry of Education, who was investigating him, couldn’t stand it any longer. They wrote in the summary report: “This is equivalent to sitting at a desk and composing a science fiction novel.”
Of course, Mochizuki’s paper wasn’t a fraud.
Academia was tolerant of honest mistakes. Besides publishing papers on the website of the department of mathematics of Kyoto University and personal blogs, this 500-page paper had never been published in any journal. There was nothing to retract.
However, the department of mathematics at Kyoto University would take on the burden.
Ever since this scholar claimed that he had proved the ABC conjecture, the department of mathematics of Kyoto University had put his paper on their official website like a trophy. They unilaterally claimed that the conjecture had been solved.
Now that Shinichi Mochizuki suddenly changed his opinion, he wasn’t the one who lost the most face. Instead, it was the people who supported him…
Not only were Hoshi Yuichiro and Yamashita stunned, but all of the students and assistants in his office also could not accept this fact.
Among all the people who knew him, only his former mentor, Faltings, who was far away in Germany, did not feel too surprised by this.
Amsterdam.
Professor Faltings, who was attending the meeting of the European Mathematical Society, was chatting with Professor Shigefumi Mori about recent events in the mathematics world. The topics of their conversation ranged from the ABC conjecture to the research group called LSPM.
Professor Faltings smiled faintly and spoke in an unsurprising tone.
“His opponent is Lu Zhou. It is obvious that he has lost. Mochizuki is an honest scholar. An honest person will only make honest mistakes. Since he has admitted his mistake, he must have completely understood where he was wrong. This is a good thing for him and anabelian geometry.”
Staying immersed in one’s own world for too long would make one inevitably be out of touch with the outside world. If there was a small problem that went unnoticed, it was easy to cause a bigger problem and get stuck in it.
This was also one of the reasons why people prioritized communication and discussion when solving a major mathematical proposition…
Although Professor Faltings’ views were rarely pertinent, Professor Shigefumi Mori still frowned slightly and corrected with a slightly unpleasant tone.
“I don’t like the word lost. In my opinion, academically, there is no winning or losing, only truth.”
“It seems that you are still a bit unconvinced,” Professor Faltings said as he smirked.
Professor Shigefumi Mori shrugged and left an ambiguous answer.
“I’m not unconvinced, I just think that there may be something hidden behind this… Okay, let’s stop here, let’s change to a more pleasant topic.”
Since the establishment of LSPM and the announcement of the ABC conjecture as the target, Jin Ling University had been the center of attention of mathematicians from all over the world.
Not only because of this powerful lineup but also because of the statement Shinichi Mochizuki made on his personal blog.
No one thought that the scholar who was immersed in his own world would take the initiative to walk out of his comfort zone.
What was even more unexpected was that this controversy, which had lasted for more than ten years, finally ended this way.
The atmosphere of the Japanese mathematics circle was quite depressed; there was a gloomy mood.
Netizens also expressed surprise and regret for this result. Prior to this, many of them regarded Shinichi Mochizuki and his feat as a kind of pride. They couldn’t expect that everything was just their wishful thinking.
Some people with more radical opinions even believed that Schultz and Lu Zhou kidnapped their Mochizuki, forcing him to make such a statement.
Shinichi Mochizuki turned a deaf ear to the uproar of discussions on the Internet. He had been living in seclusion from the mathematics community, using almost all of his time to study the ABC conjecture.
Jin Ling University also stopped the reporters who tried to interview him,
Lu Zhou felt like this guy was using Jin Ling University as a temporary shelter.
He even couldn’t help but wonder whether this guy deliberately found a place with no colleagues and use Lu Zhou as a platform to step down.
Obviously, it wasn’t just Lu Zhou who thought this; other people in the research project group also thought about it.
During the meeting, Schultz looked at Shinichi Mochizuki across the conference table and suddenly asked.
“Be honest, is this on purpose?”
Shinichi Mochizuki pushed the glasses up the bridge of his nose and asked, “What is?”
“Finding a place where you don’t have acquaintances, then wait until the limelight passes before you go back… When you’ve already discovered that your proof method doesn’t work.”
Shinichi Mochizuki was stunned for a while. He then raised his nostrils and looked at Schultz.
“Is that necessary for me?”
“Don’t be discouraged, my friend, I’m just worried about you.” Schultz said with a smile, “I propose that I can buy you a drink so you—”
Seeing that the two people who had finally come to a halt were about to fight again, Lu Zhou quickly coughed and spoke.
“Enough, let’s get back to business… Back to the issues we were discussing just now.”
Lu Zhou looked at the serious expressions on the other three teammates. He then cleared his throat and continued, “The research progress these days is fairly smooth. Compared with the dilemma we faced when the project has just started, we have achieved considerable results on key issues.
“Starting from the refinement of Baker’s theorem, the idea of gradually approaching ABC conjecture is correct.
“The key to the problem now is that we have to find a way to give a more accurate result to the upper bound of L(a, b, c), and—”
Lu Zhou slid on the chair to the side of the whiteboard. He picked up the marker and scribbled a line of calculations on it.
[C
He tapped the whiteboard with the pen cap and continued.
“And how to further expand on the results…
“There is no trickery in this part of the research. We can only find the answer through constant attempts.”
Lu Zhou paused for a moment. He glanced around at the three teammates and continued with a serious tone, “Over the next few days, the intensity of our work may be very high, I hope you can stick to it.
“Next, I will assign the jobs.”
“Wait a minute.” Schultz’s face suddenly showed interest and excitement. He raised his right hand and said, “Are we going on a retreat?”
Lu Zhou nodded.
“Sort of.”
Even though this was just a habit of his own research, he did not recommend others to follow suit.
However, the expression on Schultz’s face turned into a surprise. He snapped his fingers and spoke.
“Great, I wanted to ask you a long time ago about that mysterious research technique!”
Shinichi Mochizuki and Perelman exchanged glances. They seemed to be very interested too. The other students sitting in the office quietly raised their heads and cast weird glances at the big names.
Going on a retreat with Professor Lu…
Are these guys crazy?
As for Lu Zhou, he smiled awkwardly.
“No problem.
“But this process might be a bit difficult.
“If you can’t handle it, let me know.”