Microsoft’s big win in quantum computing was an ‘error’ after all

Locklin explains it best in &quot;Quantum computing as a field is obvious bullshit&quot; [1]:<p>&quot;quantum computing” enthusiasts expect you to overlook the fact that they haven’t a clue as to how to build and manipulate quantum coherent forms of matter necessary to achieve quantum computation. A quantum computer capable of truly factoring the number 21 is missing in action. In fact, the factoring of the number 15 into 3 and 5 is a bit of a parlour trick, as they design the experiment while knowing the answer, thus leaving out the gates required if we didn’t know how to factor 15. The actual number of gates needed to factor a n-bit number is 72 * n^3; so for 15, it’s 4 bits, 4608 gates; not happening any time soon.&quot;<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;scottlocklin.wordpress.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;01&#x2F;15&#x2F;quantum-computing-as-a-field-is-obvious-bullshit&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;scottlocklin.wordpress.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;01&#x2F;15&#x2F;quantum-comput...</a>

Relevant tweet thread: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;condensed_the&#x2F;status&#x2F;1361018841724256267" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;condensed_the&#x2F;status&#x2F;1361018841724256267</a>

Seems a lot like a deliberate lie in order to gain funding. While Microsoft backing this means they have solid financials, they are also pulling in serious amounts of funding from state actors. To the point where in for instance Denmark they where described as one year “draining the entire state innovation fund”. Doing fund raising based on articles that where knowingly manipulated to support untruthful claims really’s should be treated like financial fraud. Though likely this will come out with just a reprimanded and no real consequences.

It may be a loss for Microsoft but it is a win for the scientific method. And it is also one more score for the push to include <i>all</i> data with scientific papers and not just the pretty version.

Oh wow, looking at their graph and the portion they cut out for &quot;aesthetic reasons&quot; this looks almost like fraud to me. It&#x27;s at least hard to imagine how Kouwenhoven or anyone in his group could not have found this highly problematic. I did my PhD in a similar field (superconducting quantum computing) and if I had cut data from a graph like that I would&#x27;ve gotten a really strong reprimand from my supervisors. If you do a series of IV curves at equidistant points you cannot simply cut out the data you don&#x27;t like, and if you do remove irrelevant data points (again, you probably shouldn&#x27;t) you need to replace them with a placeholder value such as a black background to make it immediately clear that you left out some data. Just cropping your graph (which also makes most labels on the X axis invalid) is just insane, they hammer that into your head during the first undergrad lab classes already. I&#x27;m sure if they had marked the missing curves with a placeholder the reviewers would&#x27;ve noticed immediately and this article would probably not have been published. So from an outside perspective this doesn&#x27;t look good at all for the authors.<p>Well, I guess this shows why it&#x27;s so important to publish the raw data as supplementary material along with the article.

Anyone else wondering how much bonus and promotions were obtained in Microsoft as a result of that &quot;research&quot;?

Did we really think the folks who take 3 versions to get something correct would get Quantum Computing right on the first try?<p>Saying this is the death of QC is like saying Windows 1 means the GUI is a worthless concept.

&quot;The authors later told us it was done for aesthetics.&quot;<p>I sure hope the scientists developing the COVID-19 vaccines didn&#x27;t cut out any data points &quot;for aesthetics&quot;.

Classic editing your data to prove your point.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;04y1n" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;04y1n</a>

Does anyone know if this is the same quantum computing project as their anyon quantum braiding research?

How can they tell?<p>...sorry...quantum joke

Is this the first sign that we have nearly reached the end of &quot;quantum computing&quot; hype cycle?<p>Meanwhile teh M1 is doing &quot;boring optimization of binary computing&quot;...