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Scientists rename genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

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Re: Scientists rename genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#31

Post by makeitdouble »

hulitu wrote: post #29

> Scientists rename genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates I thought they fixed that bug. Oh wait, this is Microsoft. /s

At this point there must be enough people in the world relying on that behavior that you can't just change it.

Perhaps having an option somewhere could be done, but it would sit there among the hundreds of other options that so many people have no idea about. I think changing Excel's default behavior is a social challenge in itself, I'd be having a stomach ulcer for decades if I was Excel's prooduct manager.

Re: Scientists rename genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#32

Post by n4r9 »

bayindirh wrote: post #25
JimmyAustin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of analysis is done using CSVs being pushed in and out of Excel. Doing so strips the formatting. Please understand the workflows being crying “skill issue”.

Yes, but you can create a small macro to the change the formatting and assign that to your table. Your CSV should import deterministically. That's not impossible to do. I saw a complete analysis engine written as an Excel file, which accepts and exports CSVs cleanly. It can be done.

"It can be done" is a far cry from "it's reasonable to expect scientists to do this".

Re: Scientists rename genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#33

Post by bayindirh »

n4r9 wrote: post #32
bayindirh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but you can create a small macro to the change the formatting and assign that to your table. Your CSV should import deterministically. That's not impossible to do. I saw a complete analysis engine written as an Excel file, which accepts and exports CSVs cleanly. It can be done.

"It can be done" is a far cry from "it's reasonable to expect scientists to do this".

As a person who does research and support researchers, I can't see the gap, sorry.

I understand some people don't know it's possible, and some don't care, but for any competent researcher, it's expected them to master the tools they use. This is esp. true for career researchers.

Re: Scientists rename genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#35

Post by n4r9 »

otherme123 wrote: post #20
KwisatzHaderack wrote: post #6

So let me get this straight: Scientists would rather rename genes, than to simply use a tool other than MS Excel?

A lot of scientists are very bright people that can't invest the time to learn another tool that maybe is worse than Excel (e.g. Google Docs also does the gene-to-date swapping, try writting "SEPT2", the known gene [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEPT2 ] in a cell), investing time and effort in changing pipelines that work for them. Instead, the path of least resistance is to change the name of all known genes that c…

When I had this issue, the path of least resistance was to use Libre Office Calc. Of course, that's exactly the kind of application that my company now wants to remove from all systems for compliance with something called "Cyber Essentials".

Re: Scientists rename genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#37

Post by nonrandomstring »

ed_elliott_asc wrote: post #12
nonrandomstring wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So let me get this straight: Scientists would rather rename genes, than to simply use a tool other than MS Excel? It's not that they'd rather. They understand that a trillion dollar corporation cannot supply the most basic tool they need for work, despite trying for 40 years. They just can't effect change. The real problem behind it all is that they allow themselves to be bullied. Despite holding multiple PhDs they…

An enjoyable read! I’d guess that this is becoming less and less common, it pretty much sums up the places I worked at during the late 90’s but mot so much anymore.

What happened in your area?

In mine (academic) they fired Mavis, Kevin and Colin (a week before his retirement party) and moved the lot into "the cloud". What was once the "campus network" vanished and became a wholly managed outpost of Microsoft.

Re: Scientists rename genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#38

Post by [deleted] »

mo_42 wrote: post #8

As a computer scientist this sounds ridiculous. Especially that they restrict themselves to Latin letters and Arabic numbers. I guess many people here will point out that they should use other tools. I think we should help them in any way. They could also prefix every gene with Gn so it cannot be confused with other acronyms (e.g., GnDEC12). It not only breaks parsing by computers but also by humans who might read of…

[deleted]

Re: Scientists rename genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#39

Post by djtango »

bayindirh wrote: post #33
n4r9 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It can be done" is a far cry from "it's reasonable to expect scientists to do this".

As a person who does research and support researchers, I can't see the gap, sorry. I understand some people don't know it's possible, and some don't care, but for any competent researcher, it's expected them to master the tools they use. This is esp. true for career researchers.

I agree.

As a researcher you may have to learn how to carefully dig up skulls, raise rats, handle lasers, remember not to accidentally syringe yourself with viruses etc.

Getting cut by Excel seems like part of the job and at least is hopefully less life threatening than possibly blowing yourself up or giving yourself silicosis.

That said the problem with computers is that they're pervasive, they're a moving target and often it's a case of the blind leading the blind when it comes to research. And probably more and more research groups need dedicated computer technician resources who can centralize the required computer knowledge of keeping a research group running.

Re: Scientists rename genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020)

#40

Post by mike_hearn »

JimmyAustin wrote: post #21
dmz73 wrote: post #18

Or they could set the format of the column to text instead of keeping it as general and everything would just work. If these "scientists" are having this problem then they haven't spent any time at all learning how to use the tool they rely on. Can we trust anything these people produce if this is the level of competence they have with Excel?

A lot of analysis is done using CSVs being pushed in and out of Excel. Doing so strips the formatting. Please understand the workflows being crying “skill issue”.

You can write CSVs in such a way that forces Excel to infer specific data types:

"=""Data Here"""

will always be treated as a string. This is also supported by Sheets, apparently.

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