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posted by chromas on Friday August 07 2020, @04:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the ' dept.

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)


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @04:48PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2020, @04:48PM (#1032984)

    I'm no Excel evangelist, but the problem they are describing means they are using the tool incorrectly. It is vitally important to define your cell formats based on the data that is in them.

    Maybe it's just me, but it's not that easy. I've lost count of the number of times I've set the cell format to text, tried to copy in a number like 111112222244444, and Excel STILL "helpfully" transforms it to 1.11E+14. Now that I'm trying it now it's working, but I swear it's broken in the past.

    All I'm trying to say is that it's not as easy as "just use the tool right, lul."

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