Thanks for your interest. I'm part of the Microsoft team. Here are a couple of comments that might be helpful:

1) The Nature paper just released focuses on our technique of qubit readout. We interpret the data in terms of Majorana zero modes, and we also do our best to discuss other possible scenarios. We believe the analysis in the paper and supplemental information significantly constrains alternative explanations but cannot entirely exclude that possibility.

2) We have previously demonstrated strong evidence of Majorana zero modes in our devices, see https://journals.aps.org/prb/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevB.107.245423.

3) On top of the Nature paper, we have recently made addition progress which we just shared with various experts in the field at the Station Q conference in Santa Barbara. We will share more broadly at the upcoming APS March meeting. See also https://www.linkedin.com/posts/roman-lutchyn-bb9a382_interfe... for more context.

>signal-to-noise ratio of 1

Hmmm.. appreciate the honesty :)

That's from the abstract of the upcoming conference talk (Mar14)

>Towards topological quantum computing using InAs-Al hybrid devices

Presenter: Chetan Nayak (Microsoft)

The fusion of non-Abelian anyons is a fundamental operation in measurement-only topological quantum computation. In one-dimensional topological superconductors, fusion amounts to a determination of the shared fermion parity of Majorana zero modes. Here, we introduce a device architecture that is compatible with future tests of fusion rules. We implement a single-shot interferometric measurement of fermion parity in indium arsenide-aluminum heterostructures with a gate-defined superconducting nanowire . The interferometer is formed by tunnel-coupling the proximitized nanowire to quantum dots. The nanowire causes a state-dependent shift of these quantum dots' quantum capacitance of up to 1fF. Our quantum capacitance measurements show flux h/2e-periodic bimodality with a signal-to-noise ratio of 1 in 3.6 microseconds at optimal flux values. From the time traces of the quantum capacitance measurements, we extract a dwell time in the two associated states that is longer than 1ms at in-plane magnetic fields of approximately 2T. These measurements are discussed in terms of both topologically trivial and non-trivial origins. The large capacitance shift and long poisoning time enable a parity measurement with an assignment error probability of 1%.