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

[Margaret O'Brien]

sounds like a good candidate for a congruence checker.

-----------
Margaret O'Brien
Information Management
Marine Science Institute, UCSB
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
805-893-2071 (voice)
http://sbc.lternet.edu

On 8/24/16 5:44 AM, Hap Garritt wrote:
> HI all,
>
> I am surprised that the submitting authors never checked the accuracy 
> of submitted data for gene name errors and other QA/QC checks. Excel 
> is known to have date errors also between Mac and PC versions. 
> Manuscript reviewers should also be aware of Excel issues. Perhaps the 
> journals should request ascii text files only which would still need 
> to be checked if Excel is converted to ascii.
>
> Hap
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From: *"Wade Sheldon" <sheldon at uga.edu>
> *To: *"LTER IM" <im at lternet.edu>
> *Sent: *Wednesday, August 24, 2016 8:14:52 AM
> *Subject: *[LTER-im] Nice example of the perils of Excel for 
> scientific work
>
> 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
> _______________________________________________
> Long Term Ecological Research Network
> im mailing list
> im at lternet.edu
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Hap Garritt
> Plum Island Ecosystems (PIE) LTER
> Marine Biological Lab, Ecosystems Center
> 7 MBL Street
> Woods Hole, MA 02543
> 508-289-7485
> hgarritt at mbl.edu
> http://ecosystems.mbl.edu
> http://pie-lter.ecosystems.mbl.edu
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Long Term Ecological Research Network
> im mailing list
> im at lternet.edu
>