[LTER-im] Nice example of the perils of Excel for scientific work

[Wade Sheldon]

Hi folks,

In case anyone needs yet another example to get investigators and students to be wary of Excel for working up their data, here you go:

Ziemann, M., Eren, Y. and El-Osta, A. 2016. Gene name errors are widespread in the scientific literature. Genome Biology, 17:177.
(http://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-016-1044-7)

Abstract:
The spreadsheet software Microsoft Excel, when used with default settings, is known to convert gene names to dates and floating-point numbers. A programmatic scan of leading genomics journals reveals that approximately one-fifth of papers with supplementary Excel gene lists contain erroneous gene name conversions.


Wade Sheldon
GCE-LTER