Skip the hype from the popular science articles. Let's take a look at the "rigorously" reviewed Nature paper. I have rigorously in quotation marks because the process is far from it. As we will see, Nature forced the paper through while 2/4 referees did not support publication.
The paper is at [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08445-2](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08445-2) . You can scroll to the bottom to access the referee reports. First of all. You will see that one of the referees voluntarily revealed his name, Hao Zhang. This is the same guy that was found to have manipulated data in a [previous Nature paper](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03373-x), and this paper was retracted after independent analysis found that they shifted the data manually to make the values consistent with a quantized value. So right off the bat, the Nature editor is already not doing a proper job of soliciting referees.
Now let's read the [actual referee report](https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41586-024-08445-2/MediaObjects/41586_2024_8445_MOESM2_ESM.pdf). There are 4 referees, which is more than usual, presumably because it is a high profile work. At the very top, the editorial team has the following comments:
# The editorial team wishes to point out that the results in this manuscript do not represent evidence for the presence of Majorana zero modes in the reported devices. The work is published for introducing a device architecture that might enable fusion experiments using future Majorana zero modes.
essentially, Majorana modes are the critical piece of physics required for topological quantum computing, and microsoft DID NOT demonstrate that.
In the first round, 3 of the 4 referees declined to provide strong recommendation for publication:
Ref 1: *In summary, I have no great criticisms of the experiment and the data (which by themselves constitute a good piece of the state of the art of single-shot parity measurements in a hybrid device and their dependence on flux), but rather in the rather misleading way in which these data are presented and the extreme simplifications of the modeling which, essentially asumes a topological state and includes Majoranas by hand, yet again forcing an a priori interpretation of the data.*
Ref 2: *As stated above, the relationship to Majorana physics is not completely certain and needs some serious scrutiny.*
Ref 4: *The authors claim their work is a significant step toward the realization of topological qubits. To my view, however, the reported achievements do not meet Nature’s novelty and relevance standards. Moreover, the conclusions drawn in this work rest on questionable hypothesis and methodologies. As a result, I cannot recommend publication in Nature.*
Now, if you are familiar with publishing in the top journals Nature and Science (and I have published in and been rejected from them), you would know that three do-not-recommends and 1 neutral is automatic rejection. Most of the time, even 2/3 do-not-recommends is a full rejection.
Now the editor gave the authors a chance to respond, which is again already unusual but it's a big team so let's give them the benefit of the doubt.
The authors' reply in round 2 DID NOT convince all the referees and address their concerns. Still 2 firm do-not-recommends:
Ref 1: *Given my overall impression and comments above, I cannot recommend the paper for publication in Nature.*
Ref 4: *Due to the above reasons, I am firmly convinced this work should not be published in Nature or any other high visibility journal.*
The fact that this paper was still accepted is a disgrace to the scientific community. Microsoft is tarnishing its scientific reputation even more after countless high profile paper retractions in recent years. So if you were hype on this new result, I recommend that you look away.
