Like Schrödinger’s famously dead-and-alive cat, the qubits that underpin quantum computers can exist in two states at once. It seems that one corner of quantum computing research—a quest to fashion qubits out of mysterious Majorana quasiparticles—also trundles along in a kind of dual reality: both believed and not believed.
After years of dispute, Science this week added a correction to a 2020 paper by Microsoft-sponsored researchers who claimed to have conjured up Majorana particles within tiny “nanowires”—an important step toward building a more resilient kind of quantum computer. But the journal’s decision, which follows the recommendations of a university investigation that found no scientific misconduct, seems unlikely to end the tug of war between the authors and their critics, who still want the work retracted because of alleged data cherry-picking.
The correction is also unlikely to calm the broader debate surrounding ongoing Majorana research sponsored by Microsoft, which has poured more than $1 billion into the field. In February, when the company announced what it billed as the first Majorana-based quantum processing chip, it was met with skepticism by independent experts and downright scorn from a group of committed critics. “This is a result of overheatedness from the confluence of science, social media, and corporations,” says Jay Sau, a condensed matter theorist at the University of Maryland. “There is definitely a toxic cloud around the word ‘Majorana’ because of all this.”
