Much of the world relies on Microsoft Excel , and there are certainly good reasons for this . However , due to an overlooked auto - formatting feature of the august computer program , it appear this reliance may have caused a significant job for scientists using it to compile information .
According to a inspection publish in the journalGenome Biology , one in five genetics studies publish in leading scientific journals , including Nature , Science , and PLOS ONE , contain error brought about by the use of Excel . As it turns out , Excel automatically converts gene names , when represent as symbols , to calendar date or other figure formats , which radically switch the type of factor being name by the research worker .
TheWashington Postuses the example of the cistron Septin 2 , which is shortened to SEPT2 . Excel sees this as “ September 2 ” and will convert this automatically to 2 - Sep , put in it as the particular date , not the gene . There ’s no way to easy loosen this , as the Edit - > Undo affair will delete everything from the cellular phone the selective information has been entered into .
There is no formatting lineament that effortlessly allows research worker to keep nomenclature like SEPT2 from morphing beyond recognition , and there is no method acting of permanently disabling the robotic escort formatting within the program . Although you may push Excel to bend to your will , it seems that the writer of around 720 of 3,600 genetics paper – some of which were published way back in 2004 – failed to do this .
Of the 18 journal investigate by the team , all of whom were from the Baker IDI Heart & Diabetes Institute , some come worse than others . Molecular Biology and Evolution , Bioinformatics , DNA Research , and Genome Biology and Evolution had the modest proportion of error - imbued papers , whereas the journals Nucleic Acids Research , Genome Biology , Nature Genetics , Genome Research , Genes and Development , and Nature contained the gamy proportion .
It ’s not yet clear how wide the field of genetic science has been affect by these mistakes . Although mislabeled gene may be right identified by those in the know , anyone who is n’t an expert on those special gene sequence may translate or have-to doe with to them incorrectly in come - up written report , or even during the course of scientific journalism .
The generator of the review point out thatGoogle Sheetsdoesn’t present the same irritating obstruction to genetics investigator , and in the meantime , anyone using Excel will have to remain particularly wakeful to its authoritarian data formatting way .
