Vincent Mourik is an experimental quantum and condensed matter physicist. He currently holds a junior team leader (tenure track) position at Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH in Germany, building up his own lab and team to research novel quantum electronic devices. He received his PhD from Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, in 2016, on engineering and detecting Majorana fermions in quantum devices, laying the foundations for what later would evolve into Microsoft’s topological qubit research. During his post-doc at UNSW Sydney he uncovered unreliable research claims from his former team, which lead to several high-profile retractions of the Microsoft/TU Delft team, as well as puts into question research from the Microsoft/University of Copenhagen team. He continues to investigate recent claims from Microsoft of building a first topological qubit, advocates for transparency in his research field, and trials novel, robust data taking and sharing protocols in his own research team.
ABSTRACT:
Fake it till you make it: Microsoft’s topological qubit claims
Mourik, V. [1]
1. Solid State Quantum Devices Laboratory, JARA-FIT Institute for Quantum Information (Peter Grünberg Institute-11), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Wilhelm-Johnen-Straße, 52428, Jülich, Germany. https://squad-lab.org
Quantum technology is a key innovation area around the world and in Australia. We uncovered quantum physics research articles originating from prestigious European universities and Microsoft as unreliable [1]. In the wake of our whistleblowing activities, we experienced cover up by the institutions, uncooperative journal editors, and powerless oversight bodies. In the meantime, Microsoft, itself an ongoing recipient of public funding for its quantum computing research, continues to make unreliable breakthrough claims of realizing revolutionary quantum technology, leveraging publicly funded research around the world.
Can we do better? I will advocate a multi-pronged approach of increasing transparency and accountability at all levels across the academic system. I will make specific recommendations based on my own experience, targeting the quantum physics community [2]. I hope to trigger exchange with members of other scientific communities to compare our community’s specific problems and solutions.
1. Oral, A., ‘Data manipulations’ alleged in study that paved the way for Microsoft’s quantum chip, Science News, 6 May 2025. doi.org/10.1126/science.zjgojjd
2. Akrap, A. et al., Report on reproducibility in condensed matter physics, arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.18631, 2025. https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.18631