theregister.com
The journal Science is scrapping its 2021 “editorial expression of concern” over a five-year-old Microsoft quantum-computing paper and will issue a correction instead, saying the authors simply under-documented how they tuned their devices and didn’t catalog every bit of data. Lead author Charles Marcus calls it a vindication (if bittersweet after four years of scrutiny), but critic Sergey Frolov—who first flagged cherry-picked data—still insists a full retraction is warranted because the flaws “undermine the conclusion.”
This spat over Majorana-based topological superconductivity highlights a bigger headache in quantum-computing R&D: unverified claims, peer-review drama and accusations of data cherry-picking. As Microsoft races to turn its Majorana 1 chip into a real product, skeptics note that unlike your microwave (which you can test by cooking dinner), there’s no easy way to prove a working quantum computer—so disputes over reproducibility and publishing etiquette are only going to get louder.
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