Not that Excel actual genetic damage (I don't think) but that common gene references in genetic research get misinterpreted and autocorrected / auto formatted into something quite different, resulting in a significant number of (poorly proofread) papers being published with such errors.
20% of scientific papers on genes contain gene name conversion errors caused by Excel
According to three scientists, Mark Ziemann, Yotam Eren, and Assam El-Osta, Microsoft Excel has trouble converting with gene names.
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What a stupide article. Excel does what it should, the scientists don't. Ever heard of proofing? Or formatting cells to the desired results. Jeeezus. Scientists, really?
+Tommy Erickson Excel should make it obvious that it has auto-corrected text by displaying in a different color. Does it? If not, then Excel is doing what it is doing, rather than what it should be doing.
+Tommy Erickson I agree that "blaming" Excel for doing what it is designed to do is a bit silly — though, fundamentally, Excel is interpreting and changing the data entered in what is, in this case, an undesired fashion. Ultimately it is the responsibility of the researchers (or their assistants who are actually keying stuff into Excel) to take extra caution during data entry and before publication.
+Dave Hill "undesired fashion", well. Excel can't really be expected to "know" what I want. The examples in the article are ambiguous. However, the scientists knows how they want their data to be entered, but fail to find even one solution to the problem (which isn't a problem). As someone commenting suggests, put at single quote in front of the data. That, I'm my mind, is the problem. Why didn't they even try to find a solution. It would have taken any of them maximum one minute to solve it. Excel is very configurable, even for a non-technical person.
PS. I'm not a M$ Office person. Been using Libre/Open Office for decades. But blaming a program for human incompetence is… Well, you know.
Ry
+Tommy Erickson Well, it is a problem if data entered in with intent to be one thing is transformed to something else. It may be a human error, it may be undesired behavior by Excel.
'Excel can't really be expected to "know" what I want.' But Excel makes assumptions about what you want. If I enter in "12/25/16," Excel will assume it know that I mean to be entering in a date, rather than a fraction or an interesting text string, and will automatically convert it to be so. Excel makes assumptions based on what the majority of people would want to do in that case, and if you are in a minority, you have to (a) know that and (b) take extra steps to avoid it.
The problem then becomes that it's very easy to let a one-off piece of data entry get messed up — yes, through human error (and lack of accurate checking after the fact), but, still, because Excel is taking an undesired action.
I mean, I know about putting a leading single-quote, but even then I sometimes forget, and then have to spot my error later; if I don't, something goes out screwy. And I'm just doing simple text entry; proofreading something full of gene references is probably a lot more difficult.
I'm not saying Excel is wrong to behave that way (having to manually flag every date entered as a date field would probably lead to just as many if not more errors, and would be a lot more work), but it is a problem that Excel introduces by trying to be more efficient, and that therefore humans have to fix thereafter.
+Dave Hill Yes, I agree with what you're saying. And I think the possible solution(s) would be to have, either tailor-made software for the specific purpose (which is not a good solution), or to have some form of "script" (eg macro) to customise Excel to deal with data the intended way, for the specific needs of the users. Like auto-correct the formatting for certain codes that otherwise would be incorrectly transformed in dates, for instance. I don't really see a problem that is hard to solve here. It takes some tinkering, once. Then apply it where needed.
+Tommy Erickson Agreed. Even something as simple as choosing what autoformatting / conversions are to be done, connect it with a profile, turn on the profile when doing work related to that.
Problem is, I don't know if this is a particular edge case that isn;t significant enough to actually get MS's attention.
+Dave Hill I guess time will tell. MS isn't easily moved.
This is why you protect your custom dictionary with your very soul.
Also MS has recently changed stance on upgrade advice in the programming world. So I would bet they will respond to this.
+Michelle Norton This isn't a custom dictionary issue per se — but, yes, absolutely.