tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76483358530147027812024-03-15T18:10:10.743-07:00Schroedinger's ratThe TRUTH about Quantum InformationAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07090384771662989655noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7648335853014702781.post-18720152652549549542017-04-17T13:04:00.000-07:002017-04-18T10:30:03.418-07:00The other journals<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Hi rats,</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Last year I had the pleasure of writing
<a href="http://www.investigacionyciencia.es/revistas/investigacion-y-ciencia/numero/480/teoras-supracunticas-14470" target="_blank">a piece</a> for “Investigación y Ciencia”, the Spanish edition of Scientific
American. Curiosities:<span style="mso-list: Ignore;"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">a)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">I was paid.<span style="mso-list: Ignore;"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">b)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">A graphic designer improved all
my pictures and created a fantastic layout for the paper.<span style="mso-list: Ignore;"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">c)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The editor read the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">whole</i> article, made reasonable
suggestions to improve the science communication and even wrote the abstract.<span style="mso-list: Ignore;"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">d)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span lang="EN-US">“Investigación y Ciencia” sent
me two copies of the issue by regular mail.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US">Now compare this with the experience of
publishing in a scientific journal, where, in addition to writing and editing the
paper yourself, they expect you to pay obscene prices on concepts such as “internet
access to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">your own</i> 5-page paper” and
the ever-intriguing “publication costs” (Holy Molly, <a href="http://www.nature.com/ncomms/about/article-processing-charges" target="_blank">3,700 euros!!!</a> Did they hire scribe monks to write a special edition on human skin?).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US">In this first post after a long silence, I
will talk about journals. I won’t speak about the usual suspects, though, but
about all those Physics journals which I never touched in my previous letters. Don’t get me wrong: my attitude towards Nature, Science and PNAS hasn’t changed.
However, very rarely we acknowledge that there are serious problems with all
the other journals as well. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US">My teeth are ready to bite.</span></div>
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<br />
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US">Physical Review</span></h3>
<h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHbh0AeY-QBPO4RzIZjhvWlUOE19K5XbpPKN2T6xwtdAzO1NNKzs6slFYr4iB2emKl7E5VtTqHA-9uAzFb2HQKsO8U-P93lmax29etCkeTvt_CIBSwOlLL4hFmJs_1AFkYtjMYCaJ8RIAf/s1600/Physical+review+-small.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHbh0AeY-QBPO4RzIZjhvWlUOE19K5XbpPKN2T6xwtdAzO1NNKzs6slFYr4iB2emKl7E5VtTqHA-9uAzFb2HQKsO8U-P93lmax29etCkeTvt_CIBSwOlLL4hFmJs_1AFkYtjMYCaJ8RIAf/s1600/Physical+review+-small.png" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span><span lang="EN-US"></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The people working for PR call themselves “editors”, just like the people who work for Scientific American. How do they dare? What do they edit, apart from the title (when it starts with “the” or “a”) and the acknowledgements (when they make too evident that the paper was written by a human)? The only time that I recall PR editing anything in any of my papers was when a PRA proof editor refused to let me finish a sentence with an exclamation mark, because “according to our editorial rules, the exclamation mark is reserved for the factorial”. <strike>Factorial[Your editorial rules suck].</strike><br /> </span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">True, they don’t edit anything, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t work. On the contrary, PR editors seem to spend a considerable amount of time carrying out the following activities: <br /> </span><br />
1) They choose the referees. </div>
<br />
The problem is, they’re not very good at this. Am I the only one who thinks that, in the last few years, publishing in PRL is like playing Russian roulette? Here are some common reviews:<br />
<br />
<i>“The paper must be accepted, because the authors do this, this and that”. </i><br />
<br />
We do nothing of the sort, but thanks for accepting our paper.<br />
<br />
<i>“It is a very good paper, and I’m sure that it will attract the attention of the community in quantum information theory. However, I don’t see how this can be of interest for the general physics community”.</i> <br />
<br />
Please, name a single publication in this month’s issues of PRL that every physicist can understand and appreciate. Do they really exist, or is it like your criterion?<br />
<br />
<i>“In their PRL submission, the authors write a theorem. A theorem!”.</i><br />
<br />
Argh! We broke the sacred PRL oath of not stating theorems, propositions or lemmas! Grand Editor, dispose of our bodies as you like. Break them, dismember them, burn them at the stake! <br />
<br />
2) They decide which papers get an “editorial suggestion”.<br />
<br />
Whenever I imagine the selection procedure, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Octopus" target="_blank">cephalopod fortune-tellers</a>, counting rhymes and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uri_Geller" target="_blank">Uri Geller</a> always come to mind. Because if we give credit to the official explanation, namely, that the editors read all the issue’s papers and carried a thorough choice, then we are much closer to the end of science than<a href="http://www.johnhorgan.org/the_end_of_science__facing_the_limits_of_science_in_the_twilight_of_the_scientif_9028.htm" target="_blank"> John Horgan ever dreamed</a>. Seriously, wasn’t there anything better to highlight than <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.070401" target="_blank">this</a>, <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.150502" target="_blank">this</a> or <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.120404" target="_blank">this</a>? What the hell were you thinking, PR editors?<br />
<br />
3) They enforce a number of editorial rules written in two tablets of stone that PR keeps in an ark.<br />
<br />
PR has editorial rules for everything. And when I say everything, I really mean <u>everything</u>. Just have a look at their <a href="https://journals.aps.org/pra/authors/byline-addresses-footnotes-acknowledgments-statements-about-authors-h22" target="_blank">policies for acknowledgments</a>: they are at one step from writing your acknowledgments themselves. In addition: don’t write O(log(n)), but O(log_{10}(n))]; don’t use the word ‘new’; don’t dare call a 3-page PRA submission “letter”… The worst is when a proof editor asks you to “complete” a reference for which you already provided title, author, year, edition and publishing house. Sometimes I waste three hours of my time searching the damned city of the publisher, that no one in the world except PR cares about, and doesn’t even feature in the inside of the book. I wrote a 24-page paper, give me a break! Find the reference yourself and earn your salary, for goodness sake! <br />
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US">Conclusion:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US">A total disaster. I give them seven stars out
of ten.</span><br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US">Communications in Mathematical Physics</span></h3>
<h3>
<span lang="EN-US"> </span></h3>
</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhouRqUVY8WEEzckpgZPJ_o22xtzX1emWXI53vZWcNqf_3z0U-EJ8KcImpsuDTYv7Ug3_YKKm4ZejybU9IGhs65IP39MiLRJsIjeRJPHoCeZ4oPNfEPgoT6n7CQElaznfa6MMXSbj0VgxYD/s1600/CMP-small.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhouRqUVY8WEEzckpgZPJ_o22xtzX1emWXI53vZWcNqf_3z0U-EJ8KcImpsuDTYv7Ug3_YKKm4ZejybU9IGhs65IP39MiLRJsIjeRJPHoCeZ4oPNfEPgoT6n7CQElaznfa6MMXSbj0VgxYD/s1600/CMP-small.png" /></a></div>
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<br />
<span lang="EN-US">Since a bunch of frustrated mathematicians
took over the journal years ago, I doubt that a young Stephen Hawking could
now publish there his ideas about <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01608497" target="_blank">particle creation in black holes</a>. Only in CMP
you’ll get reviews like: “this theorem is trivial, because the proof uses
linear algebra”. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US">I copy from their website:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US">“The mission of Communications in
Mathematical Physics is to offer a high forum for works which are motivated by the
vision and the challenges of modern physics and which at the same time meet the
highest mathematical standards.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US">Most people would understand the last bit
as “we demand mathematical rigor”. Unfortunately, many CMP editors interpret it
as “the proof must be very long”. A CMP editor might
retain your submission for several months before informing you that your proof is not long enough for CMP. Don't expect any apologies or
explanations for the delay.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US">“That I owe you an apology? I don’t owe you
anything, you miserable sub-mathematician! Now leave me alone: I’m trying to
picture a ten-dimensional Calabi-Yau manifold… Mmm… yes! YES! Ooohhh, BABY! Feel my “four-momentum”!
Shake those “regions of positive curvature”! Let's ride together to the event horizon!”.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US">To summarize: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US">Do you like showing off your mathematical
erudition? Do you think that physicists are stupid because they don’t know category theory? Do you feel lost when there is not a list of "important problems
in the field"? Then <s>you’re an idio</s> CMP is your journal!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US">Did you prove an important result in less
than four pages? Do you hope to start a new research line? Did you motivate
your research at the introduction of the paper? Then do yourself a favor and <strike>leave science</strike> consider another journal. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US">Conclusion:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US">I like CMP a lot: 7/10 stars.</span></div>
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<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US">New Journal of Physics</span></h3>
<h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyt8KxccqR5jc8qcC3-N7tDg-zgQct8pVwG_xc2opV14ejclve1vMrNxdmE5xOMEGYNC5ulnsymKOXnQAZvXFpb137jx09KEMaTb8AtafZ13rjnB7HWHOX6zbC6_nqcFNy3OQxAJS-hFY9/s1600/NJP-small.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyt8KxccqR5jc8qcC3-N7tDg-zgQct8pVwG_xc2opV14ejclve1vMrNxdmE5xOMEGYNC5ulnsymKOXnQAZvXFpb137jx09KEMaTb8AtafZ13rjnB7HWHOX6zbC6_nqcFNy3OQxAJS-hFY9/s1600/NJP-small.png" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The name is misleading, because the journal
is 10 years old. It used to be selective, but nowadays it will publish whatever
crap as long as one pays the crazy publication fees (around 1,500 euros). Sometimes,
the editors “invite you” to participate in a special issue, a privilege for
which they charge you even more. The legend says: if you accept, ten editors
from NJP will raid your home, tie you naked to a nearby street lamp and beat
you on the back with old PRA issues while they call you “suckerlamper”. Because
you're worth it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US">Trivia:<a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/13/11/113038/meta" target="_blank"> the worst paper I ever wrote</a> was
published there. It was rejected from PRA, and no wonder.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US">Conclusion:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US">Better give your money to a charity. 7/10 stars.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</span></h3>
<h3>
<span lang="EN-US"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidq4hOPJ76IZC4SU4_FVE-H3M9dkfuqYV67VkDYbiLn5-0UCBDjZE3TXBEoYvXo_UGL81n-TFoRyuizO1wcF1013ROTw28jDaNIvSuFAHoXAEmaxzbhyM-P4ur3iGGfz9SoPTQqApdQVBP/s1600/PNAS-small.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidq4hOPJ76IZC4SU4_FVE-H3M9dkfuqYV67VkDYbiLn5-0UCBDjZE3TXBEoYvXo_UGL81n-TFoRyuizO1wcF1013ROTw28jDaNIvSuFAHoXAEmaxzbhyM-P4ur3iGGfz9SoPTQqApdQVBP/s1600/PNAS-small.png" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I know, I said that I wouldn’t mention
high-impact journals. But seriously, something needs to be done: it is undeniably
difficult to publish in PNAS any theoretical result in QI that is not related
to <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/108/4/1256.abstract?sid=2a811829-3bac-4385-8725-124fa3f5fbc7" target="_blank">Leggett-Garg inequalities</a>. Almost everything other than that is either completely misunderstood or labeled as
“relevant for quantum information science, but not for other fields” by an
“anonymous editor”. To this, I ask:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US">a) are there many PNAS publications in,
say, astrophysics, which are also important for fields other than astrophysics?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US">b) IQC, IQS, you have in
the advisory board a 79 year old man who, not only has never published a single
paper on QI, but also seems to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hate</i>
the entire field. Why do you keep him? <strike>Is it just for the sex? </strike></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US">Conclusion:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US">The best journal I’ve always been rejected
from. 7/10 stars.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US">Those have been the problems. What are the
solutions? My advice (for the moment) is: submit everything to <a href="http://quantum-journal.org/" target="_blank">Quantum</a>. It’s a non-profit journal, so it won’t suck up your budget. Moreover, its editors are
reasonable researchers. I doubt I’ll be writing about them in the
future.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US">Yours faithfully,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span lang="EN-US">Schrödinger’s Rat</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07090384771662989655noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7648335853014702781.post-1858697212175254622014-07-30T15:18:00.001-07:002014-08-10T03:31:07.762-07:00Letter to a European Research Council referee<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU1zywF0Ps7YbsMkTjL8Ua2GBt5oYAluNVEuXJZEURjWI5nTA6pWYovVnAUgby79ZyqZYNTT6MJNyhFiM6ARykdpog6RpurIzrnx9ssoX_ydC5BHxzLHDBTQA_6Lide2SfKQ7lZNwn9pPP/s1600/review.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU1zywF0Ps7YbsMkTjL8Ua2GBt5oYAluNVEuXJZEURjWI5nTA6pWYovVnAUgby79ZyqZYNTT6MJNyhFiM6ARykdpog6RpurIzrnx9ssoX_ydC5BHxzLHDBTQA_6Lide2SfKQ7lZNwn9pPP/s1600/review.png" /></a></div>
<br />
Dear <strike>motherfuc</strike> referee,<br />
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<![endif]-->Thanks very much for your insightful comments. Below I discuss some of your deep observations.<br />
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<i>Ground-breaking nature and potential impact of the research project: </i><br />
<i>Multidisciplinary proposal. The physics part is rather weak in terms of possible achievements and originality.</i><br />
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I see that you managed to summarize your opinion about my
five-page project synopsis in just one line. You must be exhausted. Other
referees would have copied one or two sentences from the abstract just to give
the impression that they actually read the proposal. But you’re right: why pretend?
Actually, why did you bother writing anything at all? Next time, send a
disgusted emoticon, “unfollow” my proposal, or just type: “GRAAAAAHHH!” in
order to express your “pondered opinion” about my work. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The I-spit-on-your-ERC-proposal emoticon, soon in 90% of all
ERC evaluation reports.</td></tr>
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Yes, my friend, mine is a multidisciplinary proposal. The
goal is to develop a computational framework to reason about infinity in
quantum mechanics. I’m sure that every day you evaluate hundreds (or millions!)
of proposals just like mine, and that’s why you didn’t regard it as original as,
say, entanglement detection or quantum simulations with an ion trap. It is
certainly not as original as texting an ERC referee report from your iPhone
while driving over postdocs in the park, as you plainly do during working hours.</div>
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You write that"the physics part is rather weak in terms of possible achievements". I see. For
you, demonstrating experimentally that the world is infinite-dimensional is a
weak achievement. Let me ask you: what qualifies as a strong achievement?
Building a time machine? Attaining immortality? Typing a ten-line report with
your penis?</div>
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<i><b>Principal Investigator</b> <br />To what extent has the PI demonstrated the ability to propose and conduct groundbreaking research? Very good. <br />To what extent does the PI provide evidence of creative independent thinking? Very good. <br />To what extent have the achievements of the PI typically gone beyond the state of the art? Very good. <br /> </i><br />
<i><b>Comments (Optional for reviewers) </b><br />Average past performance and impact. </i><br />
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According to the applicant's guide, “very good” is just one
grade above being declared “not competent”. Geez, pal,
thanks a lot for not recommending the ERC to lock me in a mental institution!<br />
<br />
I find your scores very surprising, though, because I
would have thought that my work on the <a href="http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.010401" target="_blank">characterization of quantum correlations</a>
was groundbreaking at the t... but, oh, my God! I forgot that Toni Acín, my PhD advisor, also
signed that paper!!! It is obvious that Toni proposed the project, conducted the
research and wrote the paper single-handedly; then he put me as first author
because I <s>sodomized him</s> brought him coffee. So you’re right, that paper
doesn’t prove anything. </div>
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How about the rest of the achievements that I summarized in
the Achievements section* of my CV? There you can find many instances of
creative, independent work, and… ah, you didn’t read it.<br />
<br />
My fault: I should
have placed a picture of a <i>crucified postdoc</i> in order to get your attention.
Besides, if my achievements were so advanced, surely one of them would have
acquired self-consciousness, escaped from the CV and tried to contact <i>you</i>. Nothing like that happened, unless at
that precise moment you were too busy sculpting jars with postdoc skulls, so that
you can drink their blood and live forever.<br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">*Judging from the referee reports, the Achievements Section
is a goblin-like mythological creature that lives at the end of my CV and no ERC
referee can see.</span></div>
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You might think that I’m being a bit harsh on you, my dear
referee. But you must understand. Right after screwing someone’s scientific
career with pearls like: “average past performance and impact”, you should at
least have the decency to discuss the applicant’s past achievements and argue
why they are “average”. Could it be, my dear referee, that you just went
through my publications, saw that they didn't have many citations and concluded
that my work was “average”?</div>
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Then answer this, you vile amoeba! How many citations did
John Bell's 1964 paper have for the first ten years?
How many citations did Werner’s paper on local entangled states gather between
1989 and 1995? How many citations did the BB84 paper have in 1993? Do you, in
your stupid, simplified and self-complacent view of the world, believe that all
these papers were lame until year 2000, when they –all of a sudden- became
breakthroughs?</div>
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“Oh!”, you could say (though in your case I bet it’d sound
more like: “HEEHAW!”), “but nowadays quantum information is a well established
field! What is your excuse to get so few references?”.</div>
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It is ridiculous to put all QI scientists in the same lot: if
you don’t know this, you shouldn’t be a referee for the ERC. QI has different
subfields, and average citation numbers vary widely between them.
Foundations-related research does not get many citations because the community
is small and fragmented. It’s not like in quantum computer science, where
every year the whole community works on essentially five different problems and
any progress whatsoever gets highly cited.</div>
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“But even in nonlocality some people get <a href="http://scholar.google.ch/citations?user=GjJucrgAAAAJ&hl=en" target="_blank">a lot of citations</a>. Why can’t you be like them?”
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As you perfectly know, nowadays papers are rarely cited to
acknowledge inspiration or to invoke mathematical results: they mainly get referenced
at the introduction of other papers, whose authors want to convince journal editors that “our
topic is very interesting, because all these other people have worked on vaguely related
stuff”. So, in order to be cited at an intro, your result must fit perfectly in
a well-established paradigm and be twitter-like, that is, summarizable in a few
words which, if possible, should rhyme and make a catchy tune (e.g.: “nana nana nana nanaaa...
discord!”). Everything else, like novel topics or deep results, is
excluded.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvQmKSAIrGHdGiJOXT9RdjBW9-3ldl307CxnT8b19nusRPv-UdUpIjDOpQTRTWMloYGnqrT6eTNGjEWLEoQCGr7JMpH1YBDWx-5laFviMiPI9iP0Fdt0PG78xO6OHGJFgjzxxb437NaHVy/s1600/wanna4.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvQmKSAIrGHdGiJOXT9RdjBW9-3ldl307CxnT8b19nusRPv-UdUpIjDOpQTRTWMloYGnqrT6eTNGjEWLEoQCGr7JMpH1YBDWx-5laFviMiPI9iP0Fdt0PG78xO6OHGJFgjzxxb437NaHVy/s1600/wanna4.png" /></a></div>
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For most of my career, I’ve been trying to conduct original
research. Now I’m paying the price. Shall I get specific? I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">love</i> <a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/1751-8121/46/8/085304;jsessionid=F963B20B119F5C7A6FF34DE52AB5EA1D.c3" target="_blank">this paper</a>, but, for
my life, I cannot imagine anyone citing it in a near future. My paper on the
<a href="http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.010401" target="_blank">characterization of quantum nonlocality</a> (which, I admit, is not extremely
original) hardly had any citations three years after its publication. And my
2009 paper on <a href="http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/466/2115/881.short" target="_blank">macroscopic locality</a> started getting citations last year. Why?
Because people (finally!) started citing it at intros along
with the information causality paper.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
</div>
<br />
“Wait a moment. Not all original works take time to find recognition. Special relativity was successful from
the very beginning!”
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Exactly: special relativity was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> original, even <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_priority_dispute" target="_blank">Einstein admitted it</a>. This may surprise
you, after how much this word has been devaluated by funding agencies, but not
all important discoveries need be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">original</i>.
Think of the finite quantum de Finetti theorem, or the non-additivity of the
classical capacity! Do you want more examples? Antiretroviral therapy, global
warming, the standard model of particle physics.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Conclusion (this is for you, rats; the referee must have stopped reading a while ago)</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
ERC is very much like any other grant: it is targeted to
individuals with a strong citation record that hints extreme popularity, and to
projects which, no matter the outcome, contribute to enhance the candidate’s publication statistics. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Contrarily to <a href="http://erc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/document/file/ERC_Work_Programme_2014.pdf" target="_blank">institutional propaganda</a>, ERC is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> targeted to independent, creative
scientists with high risk/high gain, original projects. Even to the average EU bureau-cretin
it must be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">evident </i>that you cannot estimate
independence and creativity if you refuse to read the abstract of a single
paper of the applicant. As for proposal reviewing, having referees like the
android above evaluating originality is like having <a href="http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/alanismorissette/ironic.html" target="_blank">Alanis Morissette evaluating irony</a>. So let's throw them all to a <i>volcano</i> and start the selection
process again: this time we'll ask them to write a poem before trusting their
views on whatever the hell they believe creativity is. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let me finish with this prophecy: ERC-funded
theoretical projects will <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">never</i> be high-risk. Why? Because, like with any other grant, you’re expected to
specify… -gasp- … every single step … aargh… <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of your research program… aarrrghh … in the BLOODY 5-PAGE SYNOPSIIIIIIIIIIIS!! AAAARRRRGHHHH!!! HULK VERY ANGRY!! WICKED ROBO-REFEREE HURT
HULK!!! HULK SMASH AND BASH!!! GRRROOOAAAARRRR!!!</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Epilogue</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I was a teenage-mutant-ninja-rat, my literature teacher
surprised us one morning by announcing an advertising contest. The students had
to pretend that they lived in the 17th century and design a poster announcing
the second part of Don Quixote. The most<i> original and creative</i> posters
would be exhibited!!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My classmates and I were puzzled: the teacher was a <i>control
freak</i>, and giving us artistic freedom was completely out of character.
Nevertheless, I gave it my best shot: I wrote a humorous pamphlet about
Cervantes’ second part of Quixote parodying a “Hello!” magazine front cover.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Not only I didn’t win the contest, but got severely
reprimanded by my teacher. She wrote over my poster: “WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?”
and gave me a bad mark.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Later that day, a classmate asked why I looked so grumpy.<br />
<br />
I said: “I spent a whole evening coming up with ingenious ideas for that
homework, and the teacher doesn’t even think it’s original!”. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My friend smiled. “Miguel”, she said, “have a look at the
winning posters”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I did. The posters were exhibited in the class’ announcing
board. There they were: the six of them in all their glory.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One showed a picture of Don Quixote, trotting away on his
horse. The poster read: “Reject imitations! Buy yourself a copy of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">actual</i> second part of Don Quixote!”. The
author of the poster was making reference to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alonso_Fern%C3%A1ndez_de_Avellaneda" target="_blank">Fernández de Avellaneda’s</a>
apocryphal sequel of the adventures of Don Quixote.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now, I don’t need to describe you the rest of the winning
posters. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Because the other five said exactly the same.</div>
<br />
<br />
Yours faithfully,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Schroedinger’s rat</div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07090384771662989655noreply@blogger.com61tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7648335853014702781.post-29577412464385062962013-11-22T16:56:00.000-08:002013-11-22T16:56:36.946-08:00Do not work in Quantum Foundations under any circumstances. Or do so, what the hell.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
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<![endif]-->Hi rats,<br />
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<br /></div>
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Very often, people come and tell me*: “Rat, you are so
magnificent! Here you are, a former magician-actor-tap dancer-model-ninja-vampire-master
of the universe-Madonna. How come that someone with your obvious talents and
–ehem!- sexy muscular body is wasting his time in foundational research? (blink,
blink)”.</div>
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<br /></div>
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*Approximate reconstruction.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The answer is complicated. I think I’m not surprising anyone
when I say that nowadays Foundations of Physics raises the same expectations as a <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1408101/" target="_blank">new star trek movie</a>. For most, Foundations is synonym of mediocre results,
low-level mathematics and endless pedantic discussions. And it is true: most works
in Foundations (and even whole conferences!) are just like that. One has to dig
very, very deep to find that precious gem that makes everything worth it. </div>
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<br /></div>
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In this post, I will try to summarize the good and bad
aspects of the field. That way, independently of what you choose to make of
your scientific careers, you'll know what you can
expect, or what you'll be missing.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Let's start with the cons: working in Foundations <i>sucks</i> when…</div>
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<br /></div>
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1) … someone proposes a<a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A%3A1026096313729" target="_blank"> lame semi-classical model for photon polarization</a> that actually <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.5124" target="_blank">reduces to the definition of quantum separability</a>
when one tries to make physical sense of it. However, since the author holds a Nobel Prize for completely unrelated research,
the “discovery” soon becomes <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leggett_inequality" target="_blank">a popular topic in Foundations</a> that
no amount of logical arguments can kill. Bravo!</div>
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<br /></div>
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A different take on this story, advocated
in <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.4671" target="_blank">this note</a>, is that the photon model may be, in fact, scientifically
sound. When the laureate defines a model inconsistent with the notion that post-selection
is a type of preparation, he’s not making a gross mistake: he’s proving his creative
genius by "freeing himself" from this traditionally held assumption*. And when
the laureate violently bumps his head against the floor, he’s not stumbling and falling: he’s estimating
the density of concrete in public pavements.</div>
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</div>
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*Indeed, how could I be so <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.5124v3" target="_blank">blind</a>!? Why didn’t I consider the possibility that, after measuring a photon, the universe disappears, or all other photons turn into Toblerone
bars?<br />
<br />
2) … for the third time, the <a href="http://cqiqc.physics.utoronto.ca/bell_prize/home.html" target="_blank">John Stewart Bell Prize</a>, which is
awarded “for significant contributions first published in the [last] 6 years”
and “is not intended as a "lifetime achievement" award” (check the<a href="http://cqiqc.physics.utoronto.ca/bell_prize/rules.html" target="_blank"> rules</a>), goes to <a href="http://cqiqc.physics.utoronto.ca/bell_prize/devoret_schoelkopf.html" target="_blank">senior group leaders</a>. </div>
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Dear committee members: Adán Cabello will renege on contextuality
before you award the prize to a mere postdoc, so
stop giving false hopes to junior researchers. Be honest, remove the six-year requirement from the
description of the Prize <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and give it to
Tsirelson</i>. God knows that, if someone deserves the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">John Stewart Bell </i>Prize, that is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Tsirelson" target="_blank">Boris Tsirelson</a>, the man who
invented <a href="http://www.tau.ac.il/~tsirel/Research/mybound/main.html" target="_blank">quantum Bell inequalities</a>. Like Bell, he had a deep vision
that translated into breakthrough results. And, like Bell, his work was
largely ignored by the Physics community at the time.</div>
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<br />
Rats, I say we owe Boris Tsirelson
big time: a prize for Tsirelson, now!!<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiexnJcnntYoInADNNOW37tDjC_GGP8irnBUHdgy9Jiayci0AaoU0XJ2E35xbPMrRyv1XN5B82mGKoISKk9Yk-zehVC3rBTN2LDKniGyVuu-1EQQoumPb065_zV5C6iP2uVf5UFALh5TXsA/s1600/planet+of+the+apes+3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiexnJcnntYoInADNNOW37tDjC_GGP8irnBUHdgy9Jiayci0AaoU0XJ2E35xbPMrRyv1XN5B82mGKoISKk9Yk-zehVC3rBTN2LDKniGyVuu-1EQQoumPb065_zV5C6iP2uVf5UFALh5TXsA/s1600/planet+of+the+apes+3.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The John Stewart Bell Prize committee, deciding the fate of a
postdoc nominee.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
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</div>
</div>
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3) … people from serious* fields advance a foundational
topic by <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v496/n7446/full/nature12035.html" target="_blank">an epsilon</a> (OK, two epsilons), get their results published in Nature and everybody
wets their pants. Meanwhile, all other relevant contributions <a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/1751-8121/45/45/455304" target="_blank">rot</a>.</div>
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<br /></div>
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*Here by “serious” I mean “socially acclaimed”. If you believe
that quantum computer science is objectively serious, stop random pedestrians on the street
and try to explain them why quantum complexity classes are much more important
than, say, epistemic models. If they try to escape, hit them on the head with
your gun**. </div>
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<br /></div>
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**You don’t have a gun!? Then, how do you get people to cite
your work at introductions and review papers?</div>
<br />
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4) … two authors publish <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/quant-ph/1/AND+AND+au:+renner+au:+colbeck+ti:+OR+OR+EXACT+reality+EXACT+extension+EXACT+Hidden_variable_models_for_quantum_theory/0/1/0/all/0/1" target="_blank">three times</a> essentially the
same result (and I'm not counting the <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.4123" target="_blank">review</a>!).</div>
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<br />
Why stop there? From this blog I want to propose Colbeck and
Renner new ideas to spread their message:</div>
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<ul>
<li>“Quantum mechanics is complete”, the coloring book
(it’s already colored), and “Quantum mechanics is complete”, the jigsaw
puzzle (one piece may be missing).</li>
<li>“nIv'e', yu'egh Qap, tugh Qo'
(the wave function exists, soon you won’t)”, the Klingon Opera.</li>
<li>“Who moved my local part?”, the best-selling
book that has helped <u>millions</u> find their true nonlocal selves and <u>now</u> it
can help <u>you</u>, too!</li>
<li>“The Texas chain Bell inequality”, the independent motion picture directed by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_von_Trier" target="_blank">Lars von Trier</a>, with Nicole Kidman as the statistical distance and
Philip Seymour Hoffman as the random variable Z. All the characters are trapped
between the pages of a prestigious journal!</li>
</ul>
</div>
5) … people resort to obscure foundational problems to
motivate an elementary experiment, whose results are published in <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6107/634.abstract" target="_blank">Science</a>. </div>
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Seriously, does it make sense to conduct Wheeler’s
delayed-choice experiment in the 21<sup>st</sup> century? In the same line, why
not measure the speed of aether, or the weight of a soul?</div>
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<br /></div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYm2oAHCmbADv5TpVe5hEN9rKgyhxSk-rx4jlW3UeBrHtgo8rqDaGDqkK3KJ7lQk6ANupDV-J-69D_4WjgXGZ4OF5r_HIuVMOabFrj9jYIDKkBNoHV_03tXRRaazNSgQGjlw_fHlGA_Ju4/s1600/sherlock+holmes+-modified.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYm2oAHCmbADv5TpVe5hEN9rKgyhxSk-rx4jlW3UeBrHtgo8rqDaGDqkK3KJ7lQk6ANupDV-J-69D_4WjgXGZ4OF5r_HIuVMOabFrj9jYIDKkBNoHV_03tXRRaazNSgQGjlw_fHlGA_Ju4/s1600/sherlock+holmes+-modified.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Experimental demonstration that the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mawu" target="_blank">pagan god Mawu</a>
does not manifest when the pentacle is open. Did Mawu know in advance
that we were going to open the pentacle? To appear in Nature Communications. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
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<br />
All right, enough cons for today.<br />
<br />
Let's hear the pros: working in Foundations <i>rocks</i> because…</div>
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<br />
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1) … contrary to <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1308.4055" target="_blank">absurd claims</a>, there IS a
measurement problem*.</div>
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<br /></div>
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*The problem is to explain why measurements return a single
outcome, not why we don’t see macroscopic superpositions. Decoherence advocates,
cut the crap: you’re not advancing the problem at all!</div>
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<br /></div>
2) … problems are interesting <u>by themselves</u>. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Not</i> because you can relate them to algebraic
topology, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> not</i> because solving them will prove everyone how clever you are* and <i>not</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"></span>
</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">because Terence Tao has worked on the topic before</span>.<br />
<br />
*Electroshock, please.</div>
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<br />
3) … there is room for <a href="http://pra.aps.org/abstract/PRA/v80/i6/e062107" target="_blank">imagination</a>.</div>
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<br />
OK, rats, this has been all. I hope that this post has
inspired you to do something productive, like <s>insulting me in the comments</s> meditating on deep foundational issues. It has certainly inspired <i>me</i> to try to get invited to <a href="http://2014.qcrypt.net/" target="_blank">QCRYPT</a> next year by republishing
my 2006 hit on <a href="http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v97/i19/e190502" target="_blank">Optimality of Gaussian Attacks in CVQKD</a>. What do you think, rats?
Shall I submit it to PRL? Or should I try Nature Communications this time?</div>
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<br />
Yours truly,</div>
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<br />
Schroedinger’s Rat</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07090384771662989655noreply@blogger.com34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7648335853014702781.post-66473673225676249872013-07-08T07:40:00.001-07:002013-07-10T07:09:28.268-07:00The PNAS hotel<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF22E3v5c3diqp8Z7bOd4S6kFytR7u1BXJpeYc_70L_Ert6jWVB_MFGsMBVC9oUogsO5iKrVgFQFgit-fHyL9FZlpq0NhH5igeyKUk8MHACyXfg0U3ZkOTZin1pFYGD88jovIqxq4lAYja/s1600/comic_PNAS.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF22E3v5c3diqp8Z7bOd4S6kFytR7u1BXJpeYc_70L_Ert6jWVB_MFGsMBVC9oUogsO5iKrVgFQFgit-fHyL9FZlpq0NhH5igeyKUk8MHACyXfg0U3ZkOTZin1pFYGD88jovIqxq4lAYja/s1600/comic_PNAS.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Rat, 2013</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXdEvozMAgss0z0h5lRXic7QgY4_2lVOl-8uVZ4C46S6jFTvF5z-r3w181v3lSFaSjIaYN1mkAaMKADw-ap-HOB0RLq6UDQKcRVgRC3TeGjy5fJuTyNrjoZpWSV166YsTRb94XEzrXaKLH/s1600/didyouknow1.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXdEvozMAgss0z0h5lRXic7QgY4_2lVOl-8uVZ4C46S6jFTvF5z-r3w181v3lSFaSjIaYN1mkAaMKADw-ap-HOB0RLq6UDQKcRVgRC3TeGjy5fJuTyNrjoZpWSV166YsTRb94XEzrXaKLH/s640/didyouknow1.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Hi rats, <br />
<br />
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</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
This post is about high impact factor journals, i.e., those
publications where you have to convince an entity called “editor” that your
article is “cool” and will “appeal to a wide audience” before having a chance
to get it reviewed by someone who's not an ignorant. Most of you won’t pass this first filter. That is, unless an individual whom I've never seen in any nonlocality workshop claims in Nature News that your result is <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-theorem-shakes-foundations-1.9392" target="_blank">“the most important general theorem relating to the foundations of quantum mechanics since Bell’s theorem”</a>. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hence I will focus my rant on this aspect, the editor stage,
because I find astounding that editors of professional scientific journals regularly
reject submissions on completely unscientific grounds. Whenever I get a good
original result and am able to summarize it in four pages, I know that I will
probably get it published in PRL. I wished I could say that whenever I get an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">exceptional</i> result it will most likely be
published in Science, Nature or Nature Physics. If that were the case, I
wouldn’t be writing this post.</div>
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What’s wrong with high impact factor journals? Is it true
that under their human masks Nature editors are a reptilian species
sent to destroy Earthen civilization by featuring articles like <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v414/n6861/full/414244a0.html" target="_blank">this</a>? Desperate
for answers, I went to the Bristol University Mensa and asked researchers on this matter. I
found that their opinions fall into three categories:</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
a) The Conformist: “Yes, sure, the system is far from
perfect, but that’s all there is. So stop whining and send those families to
the reeducation cam- sorry, wrong forum.”</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
b) The Outraged Conformist: “Those journals are a shame and
we should boycott them all. But first let me submit my new paper “If quantum
mechanics were more nonlocal, an avian compass would violate the second law of
thermodynamics in the Canary Islands””.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
c) The Understanding: “You have to put yourself in their
shoes… these editors receive a lot of papers every week, they have to come up
with a system to release that load. And the simplest way is to reject all
papers written by junior scientists. Now I have to leave you, that man with the
scars over there says that he wants my “fucking” shirt. Poor soul, he must have
suffered so much. I will offer him my money, my house and my first-born baby”.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Between the lines, one can read some skepticism about the transparency of editorial decisions in high impact factor journals. Let us dig into
this:</div>
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In his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/8483067803" target="_blank">“Reason strangled”</a>, chemist and
journalist Carlos Elías argues that Nature’s top-one priority is to maintain
its impact factor; that allows the journal to set the prize of the publication.
Problem is, Nature’s impact factor is already so high that a lot of effort must
go just into not letting it drop. Hence Nature editors have to make sure that
each article will be highly cited. Articles signed by famous scientists are
read more, and, consequently, have more citations. Likewise with prestigious
affiliations, fancy titles, articles already mentioned in the press. Elías
writes about Nature, but I guess that his conclusions apply to other high
impact factor journals as well.</div>
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It follows that the paper “Full algorithmic characterization
of LOCC quantum operations”, by John Unknown, from Mac&Cheese Community
College, will have a cold reception. On the other hand, the article “Quantum mechanics
is extra-spicy”, signed by Stephen Hawking, Edward Witten and David Bowie, and
featured on TV by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beakman%27s_World" target="_blank">Beakman</a> and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters" target="_blank">Myth Busters</a>, will make the same Nature
editors twist and shout. Don’t forget that we’re speaking of a journal that in
1996 published an article about <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v379/n6560/pdf/379029a0.pdf" target="_blank">the analgesic effects of myrrh</a>. Because
it was a relevant result in the field? No! Because it was Christmas time!</div>
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The need to increase the journal’s impact factor explains
many things, but does not answer all my questions. How come that exactly the
same document is called “Supplementary Material” in Science, “Supplementary
Information” in Nature, “Supplemental Information” in PNAS and “Supplemental
Material” in PRL*? Do they want to drive us <u>crazy</u>? Why can’t PNAS
editors read a reference where the author’s initials are - sacrilege! - <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">before</i> the family name? Are they aware
of the amount of time that it takes to submit a paper to this journal, only to
see it rejected the next week? If I conduct the research, write a referee list
and prepare the paper in their <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">damned
unique format</i>, what do the so-called editors <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">do</i>? I mean, besides checking my affiliation and h-index and
replying “we receive more papers than we can publish, so we have to select
those that will be of the greatest interest to a wide audience”. Do they
understand how that sentence feels like when the next day they publish <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6007/1072.abstract?sid=30057c8d-831e-4397-941c-edcb2c46d374" target="_blank">whatever crap with the words “spooky” and “quantum” in the abstract</a>? Come to think of it, why do high
impact factor journals have an impact factor at all? Shouldn’t they be in the
same lot as other popular science magazines, like Scientific American, New Scientist and Physical
Review A**?</div>
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*I know, PRL is not a high impact factor journal. But it’s
where most good Physics papers end up after being rejected by the first three,
they should make the transition easier!<br />
<br />
**OK, here I went too far. </div>
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<b>Epilogue</b></div>
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<br /></div>
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When I was a young postdoc, within two months, two different
groups proposed two physical principles to limit quantum nonlocality. One group
included important figures in QI who had previously published in Nature. Even
unpublished, their work was soon echoed in the press (what? You never heard of
information causality? How long did you say you stayed in that coma?). The other group was
composed by a relatively unknown postdoc (me) and a second-year PhD student.</div>
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My collaborator and I knew that nothing short of building a
time machine would have allowed us to pass the editors of a high impact factor
journal. However, when we heard that the first group had managed to get their
paper accepted in Nature, we thought: “now we have them by the balls”. </div>
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On one hand, Nature editors could not claim that our work
wasn’t of general interest, because the same considerations would apply to
information causality. On the other hand, they couldn’t argue that our work
didn’t represent a significant advance, because it advanced the field as much
as information causality did. In sum, the two main arguments for rejection in
Nature didn’t apply. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo_%28Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles%29" target="_blank">Cowabunga!</a></div>
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<br /></div>
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Of course, we were assuming that Nature editors can feel
human emotions, like shame. Our article never went to referees. Guess why?
Because “it was not of general interest and did not represent a significant advance”.
A prior submission to Nature Physics had had exactly the same response.</div>
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<br />
Outraged, I wrote to Nature’s Editor-in-Chief, explaining my
case*. My letter ended with some recommendations for the journal:</div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">[…]</i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I therefore suggest
you to change the contents of the Nature webpage concerning how to get
published. It will not be so glamorous, but at least it will be honest. It
could start by:</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">1. It is completely
admissible to exaggerate one’s work to the point that no future research can
compete with your so-claimed results. </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2. If you are not a
key figure in your field, stop reading. We are currently working on a webpage
that can only be accessed by scientific celebrities, but, meanwhile, we would
appreciate your cooperation if… wait a moment! Why am I wasting time talking to
a Nobody? Leave! Now!</i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">3. Oh, it’s you again!
Didn’t I tell you to come back when you are famous? Go away, your anonymity
smell is making me dizzy… what? How can you become famous? Err… I don’t know…
By publishing in Nature?</i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">4. Even if your work
is not good enough for Nature, you can still try with Nature Physics. There, an editor with a PhD in experimental ultraviolet LEDs will review your
theoretical paper on Foundational Physics and copy-paste his opinion about it.
In order to guarantee a polite response, we have removed the exclamation sign
from his keyboard.</i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">[…]</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">And so on. That way,
people will not get the wrong impression that Nature is a scientific journal,
but the nerdy version of “Hello!”. </i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I think I have already
written enough, and I do not want to waste more of your precious time; you must
be very busy eating young researchers. But do not worry, this is not a “see you
soon”, it is more a “see you never”.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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A rat had been born.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Yours truly,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Rat</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07090384771662989655noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7648335853014702781.post-65864171180233529372013-03-20T20:35:00.001-07:002013-03-22T11:33:05.773-07:00Research lines that lead nowhere (II) to publishing in Nature: unnecessary experiments<!--[if !mso]>
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Hi rats,</div>
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When I was a young muroid, my collaborators and I proved
that, for the state estimation of pairs of coherent states of the form
\ket{\alpha}\ket{\alpha*}, entangling measurements are more efficient than LOCC
measurements, contrary to the case \ket{\alpha}\ket{\alpha}. The <a href="http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v98/i26/e260404" target="_blank">result</a> was curious,
and I was convinced that we would manage to publish it in a nice journal (at
that time, PRA was a nice journal). </div>
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<br /></div>
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Then, something happened. My supervisor told me that he had
contacted an experimental group which was willing to prepare pairs of coherent
states and perform the optimal LOCC and entangling measurements. </div>
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<br /></div>
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I couldn’t believe my ears. An experimentalist, the superior
species, wanted to test our result!! I was joyous and jubilant, because I was not
fully convinced by our rigorous mathematical proof. My supervisor and I were so
happy indeed, that we held hands and sang and danced together. Then Christopher Robin and Doraemon came
with an apple pie, and we all had a nice meal under the shade of the Magic Oak Tree, in Sugarcandyland (Bromley South).</div>
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In the real world, however, I was confused and angry. We
already <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">knew</i> what was going to
happen. What did those experimentalists expect? That quantum mechanics was
going to break in an experiment involving two coherent states, a beam splitter
and homodyne measurements? That once the setup was complete, the skies would
open and a deep voice would say: “thou shall not finish that experiment!”? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well, the experiment was completed, and, behold, they
measured what the theory predicted. Once more, quantum mechanics (and the world!)
was saved.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This post is about futile experiments like mine which are perhaps
a bit too subtle for an <a href="http://www.improbable.com/ig/" target="_blank">Ig-Nobel prize</a>. You know what experiments I’m
talking about: the kind which make you scream “for the glory of Cavendish!!”
when you see them featured in the cover of renowned scientific journals. The
kind which the theorists involved describe as: “…and then we performed the
experiment. I’m sorry”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well, I’ve had enough. I won’t stay silent while promising QI
theorists and experimentalists waste their talents in meaningless
collaborations. Did you know that people in other fields (e.g.: organic chemistry) conduct experiments to actually <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">advance</i>
the theory? It’s time to kick some asses.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Before starting my monthly rant, though, let me clarify
what this post is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> about. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In this post I’m going to discuss six experiments. I won’t
criticize the theoretical results underlying these experiments (well, just one),
or the technical ability and innovation of the experimentalists who carried
them out. What I will argue here is rather the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">need</i> to perform such experiments. So if I have happened to single
out one of your papers and at any time you feel that I’m undermining your work,
please come back to this paragraph and re-read it as many times as necessary. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And then be honest: do we really need more experiments
like…?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
1) Experimental demonstration of 2, 3, 5, 6, 8-photon
entanglement.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Contrary to popular claims, we don’t have a use for generic
entanglement, so most of these results have no practical application (what is the
usefulness of an 8-party GHZ state!?). One could argue that entangling a vast
number of particles may be theoretically impossible due to collapse theories,
etc., and that it is interesting to see how far we can go. Even so, photons are
a very bad candidate to look for violations of quantum mechanics; massive
particles seem to me a better choice.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Where does this obsession to entangle photons come from? How
many photons will have to get entangled before the topic dies out? For Christ’s
sake, somebody write a paper showing how to entangle n+1 photons from n
entangled photons, and stop this madness for good!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
2) Experimental estimation of the dimension of classical and
quantum systems.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The story begins an <a href="http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v105/i23/e230501" target="_blank">interesting theoretical study</a> of
the correlations generated by classical and quantum systems of dimension d in prepare-and-measure
scenarios, followed by a complicated optics experiment where the authors certify dimension four. Unfortunately, certifying dimension four is not that difficult: I can do it with <strike>my balls</strike> an abacus, or a mango and a watermelon. And there's more! I can remember 9-digit phone numbers, so I can certify dimension 10^9. Don’t study quantum optics, study <u>me</u>!!*<br />
<br />
*This sentence won the prestigious award Worst Pick-Up Line Ever 2004.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
3) Environment-induced Sudden Death of Entanglement </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This project was born dead. The authors present an
experimental demonstration of entanglement sudden death for a two-qubit state
subject to amplitude decay and phase damping channels. In case you’re not
familiar with ESD, here’s the theory of the paper in three pictures:</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0R-Pz2RZ2D49Z1bk-bt0bP08ZW2zMoPg0jpEFD_mxomW0-Yy9rSJxw_yE66rxGXJkeRE2y5qPC2uK-UCjfycwjqfXKY59PqhGaElKD_Nz576_KdYShRExx1Ej7nxUVfTfT-7zXcEaZZjp/s1600/Olives.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0R-Pz2RZ2D49Z1bk-bt0bP08ZW2zMoPg0jpEFD_mxomW0-Yy9rSJxw_yE66rxGXJkeRE2y5qPC2uK-UCjfycwjqfXKY59PqhGaElKD_Nz576_KdYShRExx1Ej7nxUVfTfT-7zXcEaZZjp/s320/Olives.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The ellipsoid represents the set of separable states; the extremes of the stick, the initial and the final quantum state after repeated iteration of the quantum channel. (a) If the channel converges to a point in the boundary of the set of separable states, for certain initial states, the system will enter the ellipsoid in finite time (ESD). (b) For some others, it won't. (c) However, if the map converges to a point in the interior of the set, you will always observe ESD.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFods1KSWsQ" target="_blank">Fascinating.</a> Let us now discuss the need for an experiment. The authors
claim that “photons are a useful experimental tool for demonstrating [ESD] and,
more generally, for investigating quantum channels like [the amplitude decay
channel], as the decoherence mechanisms can be implemented in a controlled
manner”.<br />
<br />
Of course, this is all bullshit, because these two channels
are defined mathematically, so one can perform a simple
analytical study of the properties of the states which undergo such
transformations (which the authors actually do). Implementing these channels in
an optical scenario is not going to add any insight, just experimental errors. And as for ESD verification, an in-depth pub study of the different ways to touch
an olive with a toothpick is equally revealing and much tastier.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
4) Violation of Bell’s inequality in Josephson phase qubits</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The CHSH inequality (there are so many Bell inequalities,
why does everyone choose the same?) has been violated with photons,
ions and cold atoms. So what? Violating CHSH with two
yoghourt cans tied with a string is hardly surprising if you allow for locality
or detection loopholes. The actual challenge is to violate <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">local realism</i>, i.e., to implement a loophole-free Bell test. If
you’re an experimentalist with a genuine interest in nonlocality, don’t waste
your time and ours with more non-conclusive games and go for the real thing
once and for all. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And don’t make me speak of contextuality experiments; there
the “loophole” turns into Madonna’s vagina.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
5) Closed time curves via post-selection: theory and
experimental demonstration</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Synopsis: the authors come up with a model for quantum time
machines, mathematically equivalent to teleportation with post-selection. Then,
they decide to make an experiment to “test the predictions of the theory”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
OH-MY-GOD! A time travel experiment!! Our heroes travel back
to 1955 in a modified DeLorean and accidentally seduce their own mothers in a
thought-provoking adventure of self-discovery*. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
*More concretely, the discovery that you’re inclined to
practise incest.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well… no. Rather, they perform a very expensive and time-consuming
experiment of quantum teleportation with post-selection. Then they verify that,
indeed, quantum teleportation gives the same predictions as their time-machine
model, which by definition gives the same predictions as quantum teleportation.
The paradox is therefore solved in a self-consistent way, Martin McFly’s right
hand reappears and he can finally <s>wank</s> return to 1985.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I strongly recommend the authors to travel back in time and remove
the experimental part from their letter. Not for me, or for you, but for the students.
Think of them and their bleeding eyes when they read your paper!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
6) An experimental test for non-local realism</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here an experiment to violate Leggett’s model of
crypto-nonlocality is carried out. This experiment, as well as any other
one trying to disprove Leggett’s model, is pointless: if a set of bipartite
correlations p(a,b|x,y) is compatible with Leggett’s axioms, then it must
correspond to the statistics generated by a two-qubit separable state (see <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.5124" target="_blank">arxiv:1303.5124</a>). This implies that any experiment
showing entanglement between two photons is a refutation of Leggett’s model.
Since two-photon entanglement has been verified <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ad nauseam</i>, Gröblacher et al.’s experiment was not necessary. This
is a case where the theory was simply not advanced enough to embark on an
experiment.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Enough blood for today. You have already seen several
examples of unjustifiable waste of tax-payer’s money in pointless experiments.
Yet many authors of these papers are respectable figures in QI. What is
happening?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When the scientific community acts bizarrely, dig in and you
will find an important journal at the bottom of the trash-bin. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some years ago, an unhealthy paradigm of research in QI was
established via journal feedback: the duty of theorists is to develop results
which are experimentally testable with current technology, while
experimentalists are expected to come up with ways to implement the protocols
which the theorists devise. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Play by the rules of the game, and you will get rewarded: if
you’re a theorist, you will get published in prestigious journals, like Nature
or Science, where theoretical Physics hardly ever appears (and if it appears,
it is usually in <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/323/5914/598.abstract" target="_blank">embarrassing forms</a>). If
you’re an experimentalist, you can claim that your technical achievements are
actually interesting -read “practical”- for quantum information processing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The negative side, of course, is that many theorists are limiting
their theoretical research to subjects where “experimental investigations” can
be carried out straightforwardly. Most worryingly, the paradigm has driven
experimentalists to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">theorist hunting</i>,
a recent mass phenomenon that I invite you to contemplate at your next
theoretical seminar: hordes of experimentalists, sitting on the back row,
breathing anxiously, their claws ready to trap any theoretician who can tell them <a href="http://spreadquantum.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/complacency-in-science/" target="_blank">what the hell to do with their current optical setup</a>. It is
precisely this obsession to implement experimentally <u>whatever</u> is fashionable
in theoretical circles what leads to surrealistic situations where <i>four</i> different groups report <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/quant-ph/1/ti:+AND+boson+sampling/0/1/0/all/0/1" target="_blank">experimental boson sampling</a> in the same week. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These are my final messages:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
1) Experimentalists: for many of you, the real motivation is
the experimental control of quantum systems. Such is a noble enterprise; be
proud of your work and stop forcing QI applications into your papers.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
2) Theorists: not every theoretical discovery must be
complemented with an experiment. E.g.: it is possible to control where soldier
crabs walk by projecting them predator shadows; hence, in theory, one can build
a computer using swarms of crabs rather than electric currents. However, no serious researcher
would attempt to perpetrate such a stupi-. <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/view/427494/computer-scientists-build-computer-using-swarms-of-crabs/" target="_blank">Oh, no</a>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yours truly,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Rat</div>
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<![endif]-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07090384771662989655noreply@blogger.com40tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7648335853014702781.post-73096295337575299132013-02-14T13:47:00.000-08:002013-03-04T09:38:50.131-08:00Judging scientific excellence by the shape of the head<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwkJr_EqMDSgfehVvCQEOkoVrPnkbAPtBVPyqzwh4L-rKyV9C-B-iZ3b3wL6MvjYG9bx-p49kjcWxBxghCOaN2aTkAHE-RFAHndaJNHrvhPgDNG-jC0ncVl4InhcUT1bBiERnKpfTdVAoZ/s1600/comic_big4.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwkJr_EqMDSgfehVvCQEOkoVrPnkbAPtBVPyqzwh4L-rKyV9C-B-iZ3b3wL6MvjYG9bx-p49kjcWxBxghCOaN2aTkAHE-RFAHndaJNHrvhPgDNG-jC0ncVl4InhcUT1bBiERnKpfTdVAoZ/s1600/comic_big4.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Rat, 2013.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Hi rats,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">At this
point, you may be wondering: what the hell...!!!?? </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I can
explain everything: being a parasitic animal, I recently joined the ranks of
fellowship applicants, and I want to share my experience.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">In case
the comic is too subtle, I’ll say it in plain English: the final decision about
your grant or fellowship is going to be made by non-experts, i.e., individuals
who are actually <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not qualified</i> to
evaluate your scientific skills. The success of your application will depend on
trifles such as whether you roman-numbered or not your project goals in the
Background section of your proposal (veridical). So rather than trying to
impress the referees with a creative and coherent research project, you may better
put on a white lab coat and type furiously over an illuminated coloured
computer keyboard that sounds “teetooteetootee” while a flask containing a
green liquid bubbles in the background. You’re doing serious stuff here!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">First,
about your CV: have you ever been asked to list your ten best publications?
Well, don’t make the common mistake of citing your ten favourite papers,
because nobody is going to read them anyway; the non-expert referees will go
straight for the journal and the number of citations.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Wait!
Does that mean that <u>any</u> candidate with a Nature paper on entanglement sudden
death will have preference over me!?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Yes, he
will.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Incidentally,
this reminds me that in the last two months different people have argued that
this blog is detrimental for QI, because our community is, oh, so peaceful. By
speaking my mind about certain topics, I’m creating a climate of belligerence
and unhealthy competitivity that blah, blah, blah. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The thing
is, I agree with these people! QI is a paradise... if you hold a permanent
position. Because if you don’t, you have to compete for it against candidates with a paper on quantum discord with five hundred citations. So
let’s call rubbish “rubbish”.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Coming back
to your CV, funding agencies will typically require you to evidence your
“capacity to build collaborations”. I don’t understand how this can be
relevant, because some of the most dreadful calamities in History started as collaborations between talented
individuals, like
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon" target="_blank">Glauber and Oppenheimer</a>, or <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120812/" target="_blank">Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker</a>.
Fortunately, the non-expert referees can’t understand /don’t care about the
quality of such collaborations. So anything fits in this section, like the time
I sustained ****** *******berger’s head while he was vomiting in the toilet
because he had drunk himself out after being rejected by all the girls in the
quantum information workshop. What? Yes, the three of them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Then,
there comes the project. The requirements are clear and contradictory: on one
hand, your project must be novel and imaginative. On the other hand, it has to
be an extension of your previous results. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">This last
demand shows how much science has changed since Richard Hamming gave his inspiring
talk <a href="http://www.cs.virginia.edu/%7Erobins/YouAndYourResearch.html" target="_blank"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: blue;">You
and your research</span></i></a>, where he advises researchers to change fields
every seven years. Nowadays, you're supposed to work pretty much on the same
topic since your graduation day till your retirement. Do you want to change
fields? Become a gardener!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">As you
can see, applying for a scientific grant is infuriating enough to turn Mohandas Ghandi
into the incredible Hulk. But the worst is yet to come: read the next
paragraph and roar.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">In the
eve of every referee report deadline, the ghost of Research Results Yet to Come
haunts the non-expert referees. Hence they will demand you to detail <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">exactly</i> how you intend to reach your
project goals. Now, this may make sense in experimental particle physics, where
collaborations involve thousands of people and improvisation is not an option.
In theoretical matters, it is patently absurd. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">But,
absurd or not, proposals like: “I want to prove A, so I will try to prove B, C
and D and then connect the results” will be rejected. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">“But you
are not explaining how to prove B, C and D! How are you going to achieve this?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">“I don’t
know! That’s why I need a four-year funding, damn it! To do research and find
out!”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Well,
that’s not the right attitude. You have to convince the referees that there
isn’t the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">slightest chance</i> that the
project is unsuccessful. Two plausible scenarios come to the mind: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">a) the
project is already finished, and you’re just listing results that you will
“come up with” during the next four years; </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">b) the
project is crap. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">If we
were living in a rational world, in either case the project would not be funded
and the candidate would be sent to forced labour in <a href="http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/perm36.php" target="_blank">Siberia</a>.
Unfortunately, we live in Bureaucracyland, where opinions must be objective,
and the only way to get funding for a project is to finish it before the
application deadline.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Finally,
there comes the part of “national interests”. This is where you argue that what
you’re doing is essential for the survival of the human species. Of course it
isn’t, but anyone else is claiming so: if you want to stand a chance, I suggest
you to claim it too. I pity those poor researchers who waste their time
investigating banalities like cancer or global warming! For the same price,
they could be working in something <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">really</i>
important, like topological quantum error correction... or at least that is the
impression that I get when I read certain grant applications on topological
quantum error correction. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">In this
section, I would suggest the funding agencies to demand responsibility: “you
said that your research would improve the French economy! Two years later, and
government bonds are cheaper than ever! To the guillotine!”.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">CONCLUSION</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">My
previous posts have been criticized for being non-constructive (ironically,
because that is also a non-constructive criticism). Nevertheless, today I want
to finish with a positive note, because I believe that there is a fairer method
to decide grants.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">It is
quite simple: if a grant is to be evaluated by, say, four referees, two experts
and two non-experts, the latter should not have access to the candidate’s name,
the CV or the detailed project proposal. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">They
should not have access to the candidate’s CV, because they are not qualified to
emit judgement about his/her research capacity in an area which is alien to
them. And idem with the project. If you let them have this information,
eventually they will come up with a collection of arbitrary criteria to assess
the proposal, like, e.g., the number of prizes awarded during the completion of
the PhD studies. Those prizes do not exist in many countries; using such a
criterion to evaluate international candidates is xenophobic at the very least.
Likewise, any other “trick” they may distil from their long experience
rejecting promising grant applications could be inadvertently racist or sexist.
If you are a non-expert referee and intend to decide the outcome of a
fellowship on similar grounds, let me ask you to consider tossing a coin,
asking a spirit board or reading the entrails of a sacrificed chicken. At least
that way you won’t be introducing systematic errors every time you’re asked
to evaluate a bloody grant proposal!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And yet,
there is a legitimate role for non-experts in the refereeing process. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Sometimes,
certain research communities lose contact with reality and engage themselves in
senseless (and endless) scientific production. It is then in the hands of a
field outsider to set things right: the job of a non-expert should be to decide
if the proposed project’s goals would suppose a benefit for society.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The task
is easy: if the candidate states in his project description that “the aim of
this project is to create an army of giant singing oysters to conquer
Honolulu”, don’t fund him. If, on the contrary, the project description reads:
“we will develop a flying voodoo doll that can communicate with pineapples”, ac<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7648335853014702781" name="_GoBack"></a>cept the damn application and let the experts decide whether
it is feasible or not!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Yours
truly,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The Rat</span></div>
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<![endif]-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07090384771662989655noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7648335853014702781.post-77315777390167881572012-11-18T10:18:00.002-08:002012-11-22T12:43:32.823-08:00The 12 Habits of Highly Effective ResearchersHi rats,<br />
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<![endif]-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Today's post is about self-improvement.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Do you have the feeling of being undercited? You don’t get
invited to important conferences? And what about your group’s funds? Are your students so hungry that you fear for your life at lunch time?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well, say good-bye to all that!! Because, after years of intense
study, I have identified the <u>12 key features</u> that can transform you from
a moderately-talented library rat into a venerated <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splinter_%28Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles%29" target="_blank">Master Splinter</a> of
Scientific Discovery. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So far, hundreds of researchers have benefited from “The
road to QIP”, my 12-step program for scientific excellence. Read the following
testimonials:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 2.0cm; margin-right: 2.0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“I used to think that
my mathematical derivations were wrong. But after reading “The road to QIP”, I
gained the necessary confidence I needed to disseminate my results. Now I have
a published book, and the whole academic world comments regularly on my work.
Thank you, Schroedinger’s rat!”</i><i>. --Joy Christian</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 2.0cm; margin-right: 2.0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 2.0cm; margin-right: 2.0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“The road to QIP? All roads lead to QIP!”.</i><i> --Fernando Brandao</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 2.0cm; margin-right: 2.0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 2.0cm; margin-right: 2.0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">""The road to QIP"
reflects the genius of its creator. A successful scientist with highly cited
publications, the rat immediately strikes as a very charismatic, handsome and even
athletic individual (he runs ten kilometres every morning!). “Sometimes it is
difficult to make my active life-style compatible with taking care of seven
adopted kids. But, alas, seeing the smiles on their faces when I play for them
one of my numerous piano concerts makes everything worth it”, he told me while
we were savouring a cup of green tea that he himself cultivates in the back garden
of his seven-acre Victorian mansion. Devoted researcher and bestselling
novelist during the day, at night the rat patrols the streets of Bristol as
Ratman, fighting crime and evil with the aid of his assistant, the amazing Guinea Boy. The rat is three metres tall! He can fly and time-travel!! He can create Life!!![...]"</i><i>. --Michal Navackowsky (a.k.a. Heisenberg's Racoon)</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Ufff! That bullet was close, Guinea Boy! Luckily I could escape flying... Eh!? What are you still doing here!? Scroll down, read “The Road to QIP” and become part of the legend!<br />
<br />
Yours truly, </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Schroedinger’s rat</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Algerian; font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 115%;">THE ROAD TO QIP</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">12 tips for a successful career in Quantum Information Science.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">1) Define concepts
which are easy to grasp and give them catchy names, like “quantum dynamite”,
“entropic saxophone” and “Waikiki phase transition”.</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hint: try to use the word “topological”, it makes everything
sound more sophisticated. E.g.: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A: Where are you?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
B: In the toilet, trying to crap a torus. I‘m doing “topological
crapping”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
A: Oh! How sophisticated!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">2) Don’t invent
anything new. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
New topics are difficult to sell, both in journals and in
conferences. In contrast, and absurd as it may sound, a valid motivation for
working on old topics is that someone else has worked on the problem before. Examples: the Peres conjecture, mutually unbiased bases,
almost every single topic in pure mathematics.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">3) Don’t waste too
much time with reviewing work. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
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<br /></div>
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</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If the paper you have to referee is long, follow these
steps:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
a) Keep the paper for six months.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
b) Summarize the abstract of the paper in two lines and
conclude your report with: "unfortunately, the topic is not of general
interest”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Bonus tip: most editors find admissible to reject pioneering
work on the grounds that “nobody is currently working on this line”.
As before, you can establish this via a diagonal reading of the paper’s
abstract. You’re welcome.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b><br />
<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">4) Demand citations
to your work in every article that you referee.</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Especially</i> if they’re
completely unrelated to the article! And don’t forget to list as well a couple of
random papers in order to conceal your identity.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">5) Have an
English/American name.</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A significant percentage of the QI community cannot
pronounce/remember/cite non-anglo-saxon names. Ideally, your name should be
outstanding, but familiar and easy to spell. E.g.: John Entanglement,
Alice Steering, Toby Qubit. Sorry, no. Forget the last one.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">6) Cite all your
previous papers in each new article.</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That way, your h-index will be half your total number of
papers. Use this template: “[bizarre research topic] has generated a lot of
interest lately, see [all your papers]”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">7) Be diplomatic with referees. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Referee report: “I'm willing to bet that the
main result is known, although I could not find any references to prove it”*.<br />
<br />
Response: “We thank the referee for his insightful comments<i>...</i> now we understand why referees are anonymous".<br />
<br />
*Real referee report.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">8) Hype your titles. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That way, you will get more people to read your stuff.
Furthermore, you may even bypass the editors of famous journals! Have a look at
the following examples:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoTableGrid" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none; margin-left: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184;">
<tbody>
<tr style="mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: 0;">
<td style="border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 205.55pt;" valign="top" width="274"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
Hype</div>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 8.0cm;" valign="top" width="302"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
English</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 1;">
<td style="-moz-border-bottom-colors: none; -moz-border-left-colors: none; -moz-border-right-colors: none; -moz-border-top-colors: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color windowtext windowtext; border-image: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-style: none solid solid; border-width: medium 1pt 1pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; text-align: center; width: 205.55pt;" valign="top" width="274">The Uncertainty Principle Determines the Non-locality of Quantum Mechanics</td><td style="border-color: -moz-use-text-color windowtext windowtext -moz-use-text-color; border-style: none solid solid none; border-width: medium 1pt 1pt medium; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; text-align: center; width: 8cm;" valign="top" width="302">Operator norms bound steering functionals</td></tr>
<tr align="center"><td style="-moz-border-bottom-colors: none; -moz-border-left-colors: none; -moz-border-right-colors: none; -moz-border-top-colors: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color windowtext windowtext; border-image: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-style: none solid solid; border-width: medium 1pt 1pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 205.55pt;" valign="top" width="274">Security bounds for Continuous Variables Quantum Key Distribution</td>
<td style="border-color: -moz-use-text-color windowtext windowtext -moz-use-text-color; border-style: none solid solid none; border-width: medium 1pt 1pt medium; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 8cm;" valign="top" width="302"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: black; mso-font-kerning: 12.0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-themecolor: text1;">Our bounds
are secure as long as certain results proven for finite dimensions miraculously
extend to the continuous case</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 3; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 205.55pt;" valign="top" width="274"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
Local Realism of Macroscopic
Correlations</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 8.0cm;" valign="top" width="302"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
All quantum systems exhibit a strong
form of macroscopic locality, although we can't say “macroscopic locality”, because
then it would be patent that our idea isn't that original in the first place
and we couldn’t publish in, say, Nature Physics*</div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*And, despite that foolproof plan, they didn’t manage to
publish in Nature Physics! How fortunate for Nature Physics, because the paper is flawed.**</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
**I know, I know, this is not a hype… but it is equally
fastidious!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">9) Apply for grants,
even if you're enjoying a comfortable postdoc and don’t actually need the money. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In any case, you’ll need to apply in the future. And funding
agencies are much more prone to give grants to people who have already been
awarded grants in the past, thereby following the principle: “if all funding
agencies jumped off a bridge…”. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">10) In conference
photos and dinners, stand next to the big guys.</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That way, people will associate you over time with important
personalities in the field via classical conditioning. “XXXXX? I can’t name a
single result of his... but he’s good, isn’t he?”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">11) Don’t criticize
anyone’s work.</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some people cannot distinguish between a bad review of a <strike>shit</strike> specific paper and a full-scale personal attack. So next time that some crackpot engages you in an unending discussion about
a completely pointless topic, implement the <i>standard QI protocol</i>, i.e., wait politely until the end, mutter “interesting, interesting...” and nod repeatedly.<br />
<br />
Note: if the maniac perseveres, go to the rest room ("you'll have to excuse me, I must crap a Calabi-Yau manifold") and lock yourself in until he's gone. Whatever he says, don’t open the door. DON'T OPEN THE DOOR!!!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">12) Don’t write blog
posts criticizing anyone’s work.</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And if you do so, use a pseudonym. After the last mail I
received, every time I go to sleep I check that there isn’t an author with an axe under my bed! I will expand on these matters in a future post, “The road to RIP”.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07090384771662989655noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7648335853014702781.post-5546826376396707942012-10-18T11:12:00.001-07:002012-11-18T10:40:27.809-08:00Research lines that lead nowhere (I): Quantum Discord<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Hi rats,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These days I’ve been searching in the garbage bin (i.e.,
arxiv) for a nice topic to chew. I didn’t have to dig deep. A preliminary
search shows that only this year there have been uploaded 129 articles on quantum
discord, and the number is growing as I write this post. This puts discord into
the category of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic" target="_blank">pandemic</a>. The stakes are high: if we don’t act soon, quantum
discord could destroy thousands of promising scientific careers, and possibly even
cause the end of civilization!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But let’s go by parts.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The quantum discord of a bipartite state was first defined
by <a href="http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v88/i1/e017901" target="_blank">Ollivier and Zurek</a> as the difference between its original quantum
mutual information and the same quantity after we perform a rank-1 projective
measurement on one part. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now, what does that mean? Probably, nothing. But lack of
motivation has never prevented investigation at international scale. And so we
ended up with one more research topic that clearly goes nowhere, in the line of
entanglement sudden death, NMR quantum computing and quantum game theory (ah! You
don’t remember quantum game theory? Then <a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/1751-8121/43/45/455304" target="_blank">suffer</a>!!).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first victims of the epidemic were the hundreds of PhD
students who were forced to calculate quantum discord in the weirdest physical
scenarios: ground states of inexistent spin chains, non-inertial frames, cavity
QED, nuclear spins… This extraordinary proliferation of unnecessary
calculations may remind some of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">negativity
fever</i> we experienced in QI just seven years ago. There, the goal was to
compute the negativity of every bipartite two-level system in the Universe, and
their proponents nearly succeeded at this task. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
[A reflexion: if you are not sure about the meaning of a
quantity, is it worth calculating it?]</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nevertheless, there is a big difference between entanglement
and quantum discord.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
An experimental demonstration of entanglement can be quite challenging,
both for the experimentalist and the theorist. Experimentally, you need a
degree of control of your physical system in order to prepare the state and
perform the appropriate tomographic measurements. Theoretically, you have to
prove that a particular density matrix (or a family of density matrices with certain
features) is out of the set of separable states, whose approximate
characterization is a strongly NP-hard problem. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In contrast, as shown by <a href="http://pra.aps.org/abstract/PRA/v81/i5/e052318" target="_blank">Ferraro et al.</a>, the set of
states with zero quantum discord has zero measure. This is very convenient from
an experimental point of view, because it makes quantum tomography obsolete:
any experimentalist that prepares a bipartite quantum system can immediately
claim that it has non-zero quantum discord on the grounds that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">he was able to produce it</i>!!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now, you may think that the 2009 article by Ferraro et al.
put a stop to discord research. That was actually the original intention of the
authors (I happen to know them). However, rather than killing the bacteria, the
vaccine made them stronger. Check for yourselves! The number of yearly papers
on the subject has doubled since 2009. More interestingly, Ferraro et al.’s paper
has now 195 citations, all from articles on quantum discord.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
How can that be? I recently witnessed a talk about discord
where this paper was cited. Naturally, I was curious about why someone would
like to mention a paper that discredits all his research. This is the explanation I got:<br />
<br />
“Ferraro et al.’s result shows us
that discord is everywhere. Consequently, discord is at the heart of every
quantum communication protocol”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now THAT is an argument! Let me rephrase it in a more casual
way:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Dude!! This is amazing!! There is discord between your
mouth and my penis!!!”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Unfortunately, the fact that everything has discord erases
the meaning of the quality “non-zero discord”. Imagine a world where everybody
is blonde. Would the word “blonde” have a meaning?
Wouldn’t it be like “wireless”?</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOO7nqOmhyREg2mDxHUlFcApaFrzcKqpH1U3gi2Xbz4mHpViLyfzjoZNVAJqwBrgxeFdWuvBz7m_5rFaiex9z6Ucr7aEpEa9NPZt1npziYfH964XBhbvcuomCFHlqknrXmy5zdpxILXUt3/s1600/matrix_twins2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOO7nqOmhyREg2mDxHUlFcApaFrzcKqpH1U3gi2Xbz4mHpViLyfzjoZNVAJqwBrgxeFdWuvBz7m_5rFaiex9z6Ucr7aEpEa9NPZt1npziYfH964XBhbvcuomCFHlqknrXmy5zdpxILXUt3/s320/matrix_twins2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A world where everybody were blond could be very spooky.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="ES-TRAD" style="mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD;"></span>One of the latest mutations of The Plague has the form of papers
“proving” that certain separable states with non-zero discord constitute a
resource in bipartite communication protocols. The truth is: that can only be
true in very artificial scenarios. First, if your figure of merit depends
linearly on the initial state, or is just convex, any result you may achieve
with a separable state (with zero or non-zero discord) can be equalled or
improved with a pure product state (of zero discord). Second, even if your
figure of merit is not convex, any communication protocol with steps 1, 2, …, n
that requires a separable state rho with non-zero discord at step 1 can be
implemented too if, at the beginning of the protocol, both parties share a
correlated classical state (of zero discord) and use the classical correlations
of their zero-discord state to prepare rho locally before proceeding to step 1.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Rats, I don’t know what to do. Men greater than this rodent have
tried to stop this madness, but have failed miserably. Were they too subtle in
expressing their dislike for discord? Shall we throw our excrements at the speaker’s
face next time we attend a talk on the topic in order to make our point clear? I
can’t say that I approve this. But, should you do it, send me the video.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ok, I’m tired. These are the take-home messages:</div>
<br />
1) Kids: say "no" to quantum discord! It's just not worth it!<br />
<br />
2) Discord Stus of the world: if my arguments haven't convinced you to stop spreading your disease, then at least stop calling it "quantum correlations". The term "quantum correlations" has been disputed for many years by the entanglement and nonlocality communities. The last thing we need is a new third party messing things even more.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yours truly,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Schroedinger’s rat</div>
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<![endif]-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07090384771662989655noreply@blogger.com81tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7648335853014702781.post-41640970408493456742012-10-10T15:26:00.000-07:002012-11-05T14:35:15.308-08:00It looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck. But it is actually a piece of shit.<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
Hi rats,<br />
<br />
I was pondering what could the first entry of this blog be, when I bumped
into this <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_nonlocality">Wikipedia
entry on quantum nonlocality</a>. I immediately felt the urge of discussing a
paper which caused a big fuss in the Quantum Information community two years
ago. I’m referring to “The Uncertainty Principle Determines the Nonlocality of
Quantum Mechanics”, by Jonathan Oppenheim and Stephanie Wehner.<br />
<br />
The paper consists in a series of lame statements, embarrassingly obvious
for anybody with an interest in quantum nonlocality. However, against all oddS,
the artiCle got printEd iN CErtain high impact factor journal that I will not
disclose here. <br />
<br />
Then the horror began: the authors were invited to talk about their results
in several conferences in Foundations of Physics and Quantum Information (it
was a featured talk at a past edition of QIP!). They were interviewed in
various popular science magazines, where well established researchers praised
the originality of their ideas. They were cited in respectable works in nonlocality
(the paper currently has more than 38 citations, including one of <a href="http://pra.aps.org/abstract/PRA/v83/i2/e022105">mine</a>!!! [Ah,
co-authors…!]). On top of this, I suspect that they have recently been invited
to write a chapter about the paper in a certain forthcoming book on Foundations
of Physics…<br />
<br />
Am I making a fuss? Could I be exaggerating? Let’s have a look at the
contents of the paper.<br />
<br />
The article deals with the otherwise interesting topic of computing the
maximum quantum violation of a bipartite Bell inequality (i.e., its Tsirelson’s
bound). The main idea of the paper is that, once we determine the optimal measurements
of one of the parties, say, Bob, we can upper bound the maximal violation by
means of what the authors call <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fine-grained
uncertainty relations </i>(and I and others in my small, minor community call <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">operator norms</i>). <br />
<br />
And operator norms is the closest you will get to Heisenberg’s uncertainty
relation in this article. Contrary to what the abstract suggests, trying to bound
Bell functionals via Heisenberg-type uncertainty relations ΔAΔB≥|tr(σ[A,B])|/2 is
not a very promising enterprise, because, in finite dimensions, this expression
becomes trivial after eliminating the dependence on the state σ of the system (indeed,
take σ to be the maximally mixed state and you will get the revealing result ΔAΔB≥0).
Now, I don’t believe that the authors can derive Tsirelson’s bound from the
physical principle that the product of two non-negative numbers is non-negative
(if such is the case, I will eat my paper on macroscopic locality). Hence they
have to resort to measurement inequalities that the bulk of the Physics
community wouldn’t recognize as uncertainty relations.<br />
<br />
Besides, and coming back to the beginning, I find problematic to determine <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a priori</i> which measurements are optimal
on Bob’s side for an arbitrary Bell functional. Isn’t that the main difficulty
of calculating Tsirelson bounds in the first place? It seems to me that this is
a paper about steering rather than nonlocality, because the knowledge of Bob’s
measurement settings is taking for granted through the whole article. <br />
<br />
But wait, there’s more. The authors go on to claim that in XOR games the
bound derived through the fine-grained uncertainty relations is always tight. That is, if we knew a priori Bob's optimal measurements, we could
calculate Tsirelson bounds for a family of nonlocal games for which we already
know <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0510076">how to compute the maximal
violation efficiently</a>. <br />
<br />
I haven’t read the Supplemental Material, but my guess is, the proof goes
like this: as shown by <a href="http://www.tau.ac.il/%7Etsirel/download/qbell87.pdf">Tsirelson</a>, in
XOR games, the optimal measurements in Bob’s side {Y_j} are of the form \sum_i
c_i \sigma_i, where the {\sigma _i}s constitute a Clifford algebra and the
optimal state is the maximally entangled state in whatever dimensions. Any
linear combination of {Y_j}s is thus of the form \sum_i v_i \sigma_i. All Alice
has to do is steer Bob’s states to positive and negative eigenvectors of the
last expression in order to maximize the corresponding uncertainty relation.
This she can achieve by performing a measurement proportional to \sum_i v_i
\sigma_i on her side. QED.<br />
<br />
It took me 10-11 seconds to come up with the previous argument. No wonder I
sometimes have the impression that I’m wasting my time! Apparently, I could be
getting six high impact publications per minute!!<br />
<br />
Finally, the authors state the main conclusion of the article: any theory
that allows Alice and Bob to violate a Bell inequality more than permitted by
the fine-grained uncertainty relations requires measurements that do not
respect the fine-grained uncertainty relations.<br />
<br />
In other words: if it is
raining, then it is not not raining.<br />
<br />
Well, there you are. I have summarized the main result (and proofs) of the
paper in a few paragraphs. I thus hope to have convinced you that this is NOT a
deep paper. It isn’t original, either: I doubt that the “groundbreaking ideas”
contained in this article (e.g., using operator norms to bound Bell violations)
can genuinely surprise anyone who has thought about quantum Bell inequalities
for three minutes.<br />
<br />
Now, I do not blame the authors for submitting their article to XXXXXXX
rather than the paper bin -they saw an opportunity and took it, who wouldn’t?-.
I do not blame the editor who accepted the paper -the abstract contains the
word “spooky”!-, or the referee who reviewed it -well, that one I blame a bit.<br />
<br />
But I do blame the Quantum Information community. How come that this paper
was accepted at QIP? Doesn’t this conference have something like referees?
Didn’t those so-called “referees” read the paper? And what about all the other
conferences? Is Foundation of Physics a real science, when their members cannot
distinguish solid material from smoke? Most importantly: how could the audience
of these conferences resist a one-hour talk about nothing? Didn’t anybody
scream, try to activate the fire alarm, jump out of the window?<br />
<br />
What makes matters worse is that I have seen good researchers referring to
these results as a serious explanation of why quantum theory is not more
non-local, at the same level of Information Causality or Non-Trivial
Communication Complexity (see the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_nonlocality">Wikipedia entry</a>
that started this post).<br />
<br />
That’s depressing, rats. Nobody in the community gave a damn about the
article before it got published in Sci... the famous journal. The minute it got
accepted, people started praising the “discovery” like the invention of
penicillin, the cognitive schema being: “the paper appeared in _____, which is
a sound journal. Therefore, the results are sound” [compare with: “Barbra
Streisand plays hot women in movies. Therefore, she’s <a href="http://ugly-hollywood.tumblr.com/post/24541109291/celebrities-without-makeup-barbara-streisand">hot</a>”].<br />
<br />
So conference organizers, wikipedists, nonlocality researchers and book
editors, this is my message to you: come on, guys. The article has three pages.
It would have taken you ten minutes to read it critically and decide by
yourselves that it was a piece of shit. Instead, you chose to inhibit all
frontal lobe activity just because some editor of Tralala magazine had a weird
day. Well, that is the past, and you cannot change it (I think). In the future,
though, listen to your own criterion*.<br />
<br />
Yours truly,<br />
<br />
Schroedinger’s rat<br />
<br />
*Your criterion is this little gentleman who lives inside your head and
tells you: “this is good, that is bad”. He doesn’t work for Nature, Science or
PNAS.<br />
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07090384771662989655noreply@blogger.com21