Surgery Godfather-Chapter 1953 - 1335: Interview_3

The question was bluntly sharp, directly targeting the most sensitive speculation.

Zhang Lin did not answer immediately. He picked up the water cup and took a slow sip, this was to buy some time. When he put down the cup, he had already thought out a strategy.

"Mr. David, your question reminds me of something Professor Yang often says." Zhang Lin’s eyes turned profound, as if recalling a sacred moment, "He says, a scientist’s time does not belong to themselves, but to the questions awaiting answers and the people waiting for hope."

He paused, letting the words settle in the air.

"As for why Professor Yang did not attend the award ceremony, actually Doctors Tang Shun and Song Zimo have explained it on the night of the award, and I don’t want to reiterate. I just want to say, we cannot judge the pure ideals of a twice Nobel Prize-winning genius scientist with vulgar thoughts, it is a kind of blasphemy, a misaligned thinking. My expression may not be good, but I think Mr. David has understood what I mean."

The meeting room was so quiet that one could hear the electric current from the cameras.

David’s Adam’s apple moved, his statement about poor expression abilities—real meaning being, not having enough intelligence or realm to understand my words, further questioning or dwelling on this issue implies a lack of comprehension ability."

"I understand your meaning, Teacher Zhang! As a scientist, Professor Yang has almost detached himself from worldly trivialities, dedicating almost all of his time to scientific research."

"Mr. David, thank you for your precise understanding." Zhang Lin nodded slightly.

In the latter half of the interview, the atmosphere completely changed. David’s questions became gentle, even respectful. He feared that a misunderstanding would make the public think he has low intelligence or poor scientific literacy, leading to an inaccurate understanding of Teacher Zhang’s words.

At the end, he solemnly shook hands with Zhang Lin: "Please convey to Professor Yang that his choice has helped us understand the true spirit of science."

Zhang Lin nodded: "I will, and thank you for accurately bringing every word of ours to the audience."

Interviews followed one after another...

A week later, Zhang Lin had become a legend in the Institute.

He developed a complete set of conversational tactics: when asked about specific data, he would say: "This is an issue of multi-dimensional data space, I need to establish a few key coordinate systems for you first..." then begin drawing incomprehensible diagrams on the whiteboard.

When asked about theoretical disputes, he would say: "All model shifts go through this phase. When the bacterial theory was first proposed, the mainstream medical community dismissed it as ’fantasy’; when the DNA double helix structure was published, many authorities considered it ’too simple.’ Questioning is not the end, but the starting point of scientific dialogue."

When asked about Yang Ping’s personal life or character, he would say: "Professor Yang often says a scientist should focus like a lens on the problem itself, we should learn from Professor Yang and focus on the scientific issue itself, so sorry, all I can tell you about him personally is that he loves medicine very much."

What’s more clever is how Zhang Lin started proactively "feeding information." He would carefully prepare some seemingly heavy, but actually innocuous "exclusive news":

"What can be revealed is that we are cooperating with three top research centers in Europe to develop the next generation of system assessment tools... Exactly which three? Sorry, cannot disclose before formal agreement signing, but can say that one has history tracing back to the Weierstrass era."

"Professor Yang is recently rereading some seemingly unrelated classics, such as the ’Inner Canon of Huangdi’ and ’On Energy Flow in Life Systems’... He often says modern medicine needs to look back at the path traveled to see the future direction more clearly."

"Our team has a tradition, Thursday afternoons are ’failed data sharing sessions.’ Yes, specifically sharing failed experiments, negative results, inexplicable anomalies. Because we believe the real key to scientific progress often hides in those data points inconsistent with expectations."

This information was eagerly reported by the media: "Yang Ping’s team investigates next-gen assessment tools," "Nobel laureate finds inspiration from Chinese medical classics," "’Failure Sharing Sessions’ — Unique culture of a top team." The public saw an open, profound, philosophically heightened scientific team image, while the team’s core work was perfectly protected under the halo.

Zhang Lin even developed "personalized response strategies":

To academic media seeking depth, he talked about paradigm shifts and scientific philosophy; to popular media seeking stories, he spoke of patient stories and team anecdotes; to online media seeking hot topics, he threw out some carefully designed "golden phrases," such as "Medicine is not about conquering death, but about granting quality to life," this phrase was made into posters and went viral on social media.

The monitoring room became the team’s most popular "entertainment center." After dinner each day, everyone would gather to watch how Zhang Lin "fooled" various media.

"Look, he’s drawing that ’multi-dimensional phase space’ diagram again, I bet the reporter doesn’t know it’s just a three-dimensional coordinate axis with some curves added." Chu Xiaoxiao laughed until she leaned forward and backward.

"This time, this reporter is impressive, persistent with the question about adverse reactions... Nice! Beautiful! Zhang Lin shifted the topic to ’the risks and ethical boundaries of science,’ perfectly dodging." Jiang Jitong applauded.

Yang Ping usually just watched silently, a smile on his lips. Once, Zhang Lin said in an interview, "True science is not about finding answers, but about learning to ask better questions," Yang Ping nodded lightly and said to Tang Shun beside him: "That is actually correct. It’s just, coming from his mouth, it’s more like a tactic."