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Scientists rename genes because Microsoft Excel reads them as dates:
Microsoft Excel’s automatic formatting is normally helpful for finishing spreadsheets quickly, but it’s proving to be an agent of chaos for geneticists. The Verge has learned that the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee has issued guidelines for naming human genes to prevent Excel’s automatic date formatting from altering data. MARCH1 (Membrane Associated Ring-CH-Type Finger 1), for example, should now be labeled MARCHF1 to stop Excel from changing it to 1-Mar.
The names of 27 genes have been changed in the past year to avoid Excel-related errors, HGNC coordinator Elspeth Bruford said. This isn’t a rare error, either, as Excel had affected about a fifth of genetics-related papers examined in a 2016 study.
Journal Reference:
Mark Ziemann, Yotam Eren, Assam El-Osta. Gene name errors are widespread in the scientific literature [open], Genome Biology (DOI: 10.1186/s13059-016-1044-7)
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday August 07 2020, @02:20PM (1 child)
Who's entering the data? If it's a grad student, you've got a point. If it's a secretary, much less so. A good secretary could understand that, but the average one couldn't. If it's a temp, it's not a reasonable point at all.
To a programmer putting things in quotes is a reasonable approach. Many others can learn that....but many also can't or see no reason to.
In a good system, the data would be entered into a program that preprocessed the data so that it was sanitized against errors. This field is for genes, that field is for dates, each must be filled with the appropriate data. And one can set up that kind of front end for excel (or one could a couple of decades ago). But raw excel doesn't have that kind of sanitation, and it CAN'T. And quick data entry can't be rapidly constructed. (I only built one of those front ends once, so I can't really guess the extra time, but I'd guess a week to build and test the front end if you were experienced at it.) But how many labs these days have a person on staff who's experienced at that kind of job? (And actually more important, how many don't?)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @10:15PM
The real solution is for Microsoft to just fix their software. It's trivial to set up a cell to display as a date without messing with the underlying data. There's numerous formatting options available.
The default should be to leave the data alone and display it as entered unless the user intervenes. Under no circumstance should it do smart things. MS doesn't do smart, well, unless it's smart for a group of crackheads. The only programmers I've encountered that are dumber are the ones that Google employs working on their products. OMG are those people stupid. Even basic functionality tends to be broken beyond belief most of the time.