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Microsoft Technology

Microsoft's Big Win in Quantum Computing Was an 'Error' After All (wired.com) 34

In a 2018 paper, researchers said they found evidence of an elusive theorized particle. A closer look now suggests otherwise. From a report: In March 2018, Dutch physicist and Microsoft employee Leo Kouwenhoven published headline-grabbing new evidence that he had observed an elusive particle called a Majorana fermion. Microsoft hoped to harness Majorana particles to build a quantum computer, which promises unprecedented power by tapping quirky physics. Rivals IBM and Google had already built impressive prototypes using more established technology. Kouwenhoven's discovery buoyed Microsoft's chance to catch up. The company's director of quantum computing business development, Julie Love, told the BBC that Microsoft would have a commercial quantum computer "within five years." Three years later, Microsoft's 2018 physics fillip has fizzled. Late last month, Kouwenhoven and his 21 coauthors released a new paper including more data from their experiments. It concludes that they did not find the prized particle after all. An attached note from the authors said the original paper, in the prestigious journal Nature, would be retracted, citing "technical errors."

Two physicists in the field say extra data Kouwenhoven's group provided them after they questioned the 2018 results shows the team had originally excluded data points that undermined its news-making claims. "I don't know for sure what was in their heads," says Sergey Frolov, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, "but they skipped some data that contradicts directly what was in the paper. From the fuller data, there's no doubt that there's no Majorana." The 2018 paper claimed to show firmer evidence for Majorana particles than a 2012 study with more ambiguous results that nevertheless won fame for Kouwenhoven and his lab at Delft Technical University. That project was partly funded by Microsoft, and the company hired Kouwenhoven to work on Majoranas in 2016. The 2018 paper reported seeing telltale signatures of the Majorana particles, termed "zero-bias peaks," in electric current passing through a tiny, supercold wire of semiconductor. One chart in the paper showed dots tracing a plateau at exactly the electrical conductance value that theory predicted. Frolov says he saw multiple problems in the unpublished data, including data points that strayed from the line but were omitted from the published paper. If included, those data points suggested Majorana particles could not be present. Observations flagged by Frolov are visible in the charts in the new paper released last month, but the text does not explain why they were previously excluded. It acknowledges that trying to experimentally validate specific theoretical predictions "has the potential to lead to confirmation bias and effectively yield false-positive evidence."

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Microsoft's Big Win in Quantum Computing Was an 'Error' After All

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    I wouldn't be surprised if the researchers had a few too many marihuana particles before deciding that it would be a great idea and publishing the paper.

  • by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Friday February 12, 2021 @04:18PM (#61057344) Journal

    "It looks like you are trying to kill a cat. Would you like probable help with that?"

  • Sounds like Microsoft needs to upgrade their equipment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
  • by Otis B. Dilroy III ( 2110816 ) on Friday February 12, 2021 @04:25PM (#61057382)
    " the team had originally excluded data points that undermined its news-making claims"
  • What does it say about the state of education when your job depends upon the number of papers you publish, not the quality?
    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      Quality is a slippery concept when it comes to papers. You can have one paper that is panned for one conference's referees yet another conference's referees think it is the bees' knees. Then there are the reviewers who look to see if you referenced their papers in yours. If you don't, they don't like your paper. And each discipline has various "correct" lines of thinking. Tell them something that contradicts one of those lines and no publishing for you.

      Over time I expect it all evens out, but you won't know

      • Over time I expect it all evens out, but you won't know that until years later.

        Personally, I've become quite fond of Thomas Kuhn's explanation for this. Basically, he argues that this is just how science works and you have to take the good with the bad. A consensus forms and until that consensus becomes clearly falsified, it actually makes sense to cling to it because that consensus creates a certain worldview—a paradigm—that the science can organize around and form a coherent argot to describe.

        If you look at the sciences that have run into trouble recently—psycholog

  • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Friday February 12, 2021 @05:50PM (#61057654)

    You changed the result by looking at it!

  • MS making a mistake. I will always remember where I was, and what I was to when I heard such momentous news.
  • The brilliant Italian physicist Ettore Majorana disappeared while taking a boat trip from Palermo to Naples on 25 March 1938, he was 32. He did two strange things just before his disappearance - withdrawing all his money, and then sending a letter to a colleague saying he was going to disappear. Where he actually disappeared is unknown, there are conflicting reports of his being seen on the journey. No motivations, or earlier signs, are known to account for any rash or strange behavior.

    The major theory is s

  • Now that a certain orange plague on humanity has been removed from most of it's power, we can get truth in science again. None of this Alternative Facts or Fake News sillyness, (okay *rap & bull*hit).

    Wonder what else we will "discover" is in error?
    - Bigfoot does not exist?
    - NASA actually landed men on the moon?
    - Wearing face masks reduces the spread of air born disease?
    - Vaccines actually reduce disease symptoms and spreading?
    - Their was voter fraud in the USA? (And by the orange party!)

    Oh
  • ... which will produce a quantum computer with unparalleled AI capabilities, running nearly 90% slower than its competition, guaranteeing the wrong answer to at least 50% of questions put to it, and instantly being exploited by ransomware gangs who will demand 50 BTC for the score of last week's football game.

  • But wait, it was "science." It must not be questioned. It is impossible for it to be wrong. Off with their heads!

MS-DOS must die!

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