After Weber returned to Germany, Manstein received an email.
It wasn't from Weber; it was signed by Hanna, the young female postdoc who came to China with Weber. She was blonde, had a low ponytail, and hardly spoke throughout the entire time. The email was very brief:
"Professor Manstein, this is Hanna, Professor Weber's student. Last week in China, I saw your data. After returning to Germany, I reviewed our laboratory's data from the past five years and found that three independent studies exhibited phenomena similar to your primordial cell activation. At that time, we interpreted those phenomena as 'non-specific reactions' or 'background noise' and did not investigate further. Now, I suspect we might have missed something important. Professor Weber asked me to inquire if you would be willing to help us reanalyze the raw data if we sent it to you."
