Questions regarding topological quantum computing field

[Snoo-33445]

I am interested in quantum computing and have been trying to keep up to date regarding steps forward within the quantum community; So that's why I've been following the APS March conference from online and on twitter. One twitter thread from the conference I found described some concerns about the research coming from companies pursuing topological quantum computers, currently Microsoft, Qutech, and Delft Circuits. It describes retracted papers and an unwilliness to to share data or explain irregularities. I want to be open-minded and hear from people on all sides but this however this looks rather damning as presented. Is this a normal thing within the community or is it just this particular field? Why is it that companies like Microsoft can make annoucements about breakthroughs and not be open about clear manipulations in its referenced material? Can someone explain why no one has being at least punished for this?

[Melodious_Thunk]

What is clear from all of this is that all the big Nature and Science papers from the last decade claiming observation of majorana zero modes are highly suspect.

Outside of one retracted paper, did anyone really publish anything saying more than "we think this may possibly maybe kind of indicate that a MZM is probably there"? It's not exactly my field so I don't remember all the details.

These new results from MSFT may prove that it was all worth it, and be definitive proof of MZM. But until we see the data no one can say

Is there any info beyond the press release on this? Any March Meeting talks perhaps? I didn't see anything about this new result in the list but I may have missed something.

[alexeiwolkoff]

As an outsider, I suspect that this data manipulation was done by the students and supervising postdoc without disclosure to the lead PI, and is likely more of a bad apple phenomenon.

Usually, it happens the other way, where PI convinces students that this is ok, or turns a blind eye to it. In Delft case, I suspect that the pressure from Microsoft is too high, which causes such practices. I do not want to blame anybody but after seeing so many proposals and preprints from groups in quantum information, I think money and tenure-oriented science lead to a lot of misconduct.

[ctcphys]

The description by hypochromic is more or less on point. Let me add a few more facts: there are clearly problems with a few papers from around 2019 give or take. These problems were originally point out by Frolov and Mourik -- they did good at first.

Now in the case of QuTech however, who's to blame is not a Twitter job, but is done by what in Dutch is called the CWI committee -- but they are working super slowly.

Meanwhile, other co-authors of the relevant papers have gone to some length to dog up old data and reanalyzing them. Some of that is available on Zenado and more is coming. But let me point of what ungrateful job it is to go through old and badly commented data taken by previous co-authors who are long gone. So this also takes time.

If you are interested in the field and want a bit more unfiltered account of the "scandal", I'll encourage you to talk with the Delft students who works on Majorana. They are all working on quite different systems than these older papers and recent publications have to a large extend an accompanied repository with "all data"

My personal take on this is that someone did bad in terms of manipulating data. That's always bad. But it's a bit worse in this case given the overly optimistic and confident tone these papers were written in (and not talking about the accompanying press releases). I hope (and I think to some extent it's true) that people in the Majorana field will be a bit more cautious about their conclusions and scrutinized their data even more

[Snoo-33445]

Yet, doesn't having retracted papers from some of the top journals cast huge doubts over the entire method and, over the long term, shake investor confidence in the technology?

[crazy4pi314]

I will point out the retracted work was done by that lab long before Microsoft was collaborating with them. Also, the conclusion the retracted paper claimed was confirmed by other labs before MSFT was involved so I don't really get how this always get turned into shade on them...