Autocorrect errors in Excel still creating genomics headache

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Researchers are finding that autocorrect errors in Excel spreadsheets are affecting research in genomics.

Despite geneticists being warned about spreadsheet problems, 30% of published papers contain mangled gene names in supplementary data.

In 2016, Mark Ziemann and his colleagues at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia, quantified the problem. They found that one-fifth of papers in top genomics journals contained gene-name conversion errors in Excel spreadsheets published as supplementary data2. These data sets are frequently accessed and used by other geneticists, so errors can be perpetuated and distort further analyses.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02211-4

This reliance on Excel has created errors in fields such as finance and banking to medicine to airplane construction, all fields that expect and require precision.

How much has Excel autocorrect created more errors in data that most people don’t expect?