Dramatic smoking‑gun patterns can signify important effects in topological condensed‑matter physics, but these originate from mundane fine‑tuning in complex samples. Credit: Frolov Lab

A group of scientists, including Sergey Frolov, professor of physics at the University of Pittsburgh, and co‑authors from Minnesota and Grenoble, have undertaken several replication studies centered around topological effects in nanoscale superconducting or semiconducting devices. This field is important because it can bring about topological quantum computing, a hypothetical way of storing and manipulating quantum information while protecting it against errors.

In all cases, they found alternative explanations of similar data. While the original papers claimed advances for quantum computing and made their way into top scientific journals, the individual follow‑ups could not make it past the editors at those same journals.

Reasons given for their rejection included that, being a replication, the work was not novel; and that, after a couple of years, the field had moved on. But replications take time and effort, the experiments are resource‑intensive, and important science does not become irrelevant on the scale of years.

The scientists then united several replication attempts in the same field of topological quantum computing into a single paper. The paper was published in the journal Science.

The aim was two‑fold:

1. Demonstrate that even very dramatic signatures that may appear consistent with major breakthroughs can have other explanations—especially when fuller datasets are considered.

2. Outline changes to the research and peer‑review process that have the potential to increase the reliability of experimental results: sharing more data and openly discussing alternative explanations.

It took significant time and argumentation for the rest of the community to accept this possibility: the paper spent a record two years under peer and editorial review.

---

Publication details

S. M. Frolov, “Data sharing helps avoid ‘smoking gun’ claims of topological milestones,” Science (2026). DOI: 10.1126/science.adk9181

Citation

Replication efforts suggest ‘smoking gun’ evidence isn’t enough to prove quantum computing claims (2026, January 8). Retrieved 18 January 2026 from https://phys.org/news/2026-01-replication-efforts-gun-evidence-isnt.html.