Another majorana publication withdrawn

Another majorana publication withdrawn

After last year’s retraction of the publication on the observation of majorana particles, last week saw the retraction of an earlier article, also in Nature. 

In the 2017 article, Professor Leo Kouwenhoven (QuTech, Microsoft) and Professor Erik Bakkers (TU/e) describe a network of nanowires they developed in which they wanted to generate majorana particles as a stable basis for a quantum computer. In the (retracted) Nature article they concluded that the nanomaterial is very suitable for this purpose.

Now Bakker and a co-author write that when they were collecting the underlying data for the publication, they discovered that part of the data from 2017 had been selectively removed or cropped. They informed Nature of their findings, as well as their 23 co-authors, including Kouwenhoven. Authors and magazine alike then unanimously decided to retract the publication.