3 ms·

Corrected headline: "One in five genetics researchers are careless with their data" See also "A poor workman blames his tools"

PhasmaFelis 8y ago
I have sometimes had Excel force pasted data into date format, even after I've explicitly set the entire row to text format. I had to go back and manually retype every date-like entry. It doesn't always do this, but it's frustrating as hell when it does. I can see even an attentive researcher being tripped up by that.
_Wintermute 8y ago
It's an irritatingly common requirement for supplementary data submitted to a journal to be in the form of an excel file, so I'd bet a number of those errors were caused by researchers just going through all the hoops required for publishing.
- michaericalribo 8y ago
  Chiming in with the first big name journal I thought of—Nature, which lists Excel as a more appropriate format for supplementary data than a table: https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/supp-info https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/supp-info It doesn’t mean Excel is the right tool, but it does speak to a fundamental problem: it’s a non-starter to try to change the entire scientific community in one move. We need to find ways to make the tools people use do a better job at doing what we want them to, rather than shouting that they’re using the wrong tool...
MiddleEndian 8y ago
>A poor workman blames his tools This phrase is used far too much when defending buggy or user-unfriendly software. A good workman forced to use bad tools won't have a great time. I think Excel is better than its competitors but I'm not very familiar with academia. If what other users mention about being forced to reenter already complete data into Excel, which then arbitrarily converts entries into dates, is true, this is absolutely an issue with the tool and/or bureaucracy.

3 ms·

Corrected headline: "One in five genetics researchers are careless with their data" See also "A poor workman blames his tools"

by dsjoerg 8y ago

PhasmaFelis 8y ago
I have sometimes had Excel force pasted data into date format, even after I've explicitly set the entire row to text format. I had to go back and manually retype every date-like entry. It doesn't always do this, but it's frustrating as hell when it does. I can see even an attentive researcher being tripped up by that.
_Wintermute 8y ago
It's an irritatingly common requirement for supplementary data submitted to a journal to be in the form of an excel file, so I'd bet a number of those errors were caused by researchers just going through all the hoops required for publishing.
- michaericalribo 8y ago
  Chiming in with the first big name journal I thought of—Nature, which lists Excel as a more appropriate format for supplementary data than a table: https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/supp-info https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/supp-info It doesn’t mean Excel is the right tool, but it does speak to a fundamental problem: it’s a non-starter to try to change the entire scientific community in one move. We need to find ways to make the tools people use do a better job at doing what we want them to, rather than shouting that they’re using the wrong tool...
MiddleEndian 8y ago
>A poor workman blames his tools This phrase is used far too much when defending buggy or user-unfriendly software. A good workman forced to use bad tools won't have a great time. I think Excel is better than its competitors but I'm not very familiar with academia. If what other users mention about being forced to reenter already complete data into Excel, which then arbitrarily converts entries into dates, is true, this is absolutely an issue with the tool and/or bureaucracy.