A while back, I wrote a post, Laugh Therapy where I described a paper, quant-ph/0610117 by M. I. Dyakonov entitled “Is Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computation Really Possible?” The tone of my post was flipant and commentors (both online and offline) rightly pointed out that the proper way to resond to such a post is not with my bad jokestering, but by pointing out the technical flaws in the argument. i.e. to respond like a professional and not like a clown (which, of course, is my first reaction to nearly everything in the world.) At the time I didn’t think much about it, except that I agreed with the commentors. But I also thought, but yeah, when will this ever really be important? I mean no offense but large chunks of what I see on the arxiv everyday is, well, kind of junky (and I don’t exclude myself from this category.) So what harm is there in one more paper which I strongly disagreed with on the arxiv?
Karma, however, must have heard these musing in my head, since today I received a rejection for a grant proposal and what did I find in one of the reviews? Yep, you guessed it, a reference to quant-ph/0610117. Doh.
O brave new quantum world!
Doh indeed! 🙁
Isaac Chuang obviously had more luck.