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On the practical side, how would people show that their work hasn't been affected negatively by using Excel? How would the journals evaluate that? I suspect thi
by takluyver 6y ago
On the practical side, how would people show that their work hasn't been affected negatively by using Excel? How would the journals evaluate that? I suspect this would just become another box to check - yes, we use Excel, yes, we checked the results, like the last 50 times.
Intellectually, it feels snobbish to single out Excel like this. I'm a software engineer in science, and I generally agree that scientists should learn some kind of coding. But you can make mistakes in Python or R as well - not to mention in physical experiments. We should check data and methods in general, not presume incompetence if people use one tool.
- pas 6y agoBy providing a repo with raw data, and the code that runs on it that eventually produces the results that are in the manuscript. Anything else is just a bunch of handwaving. It's not coincidental that big evil FDA/pharma requires people to sign - on paper - their lab notes (and to have lab notes, and to sign that they calibrated the equipment, and that they checked for common mistakes). And yes, I know this costs a lot, and that this is sort of a pipe dream. And I'm not saying this is the best solution. Renaming genes might be a lot better, because it just allows the field to move on, and Excel will eventually die out, or at least researchers will move away from it - maybe to Jupyter, if we're lucky. So, all in all, of course Excel is just a symptom, but society is already pretty stubborn when it comes to financing R&D and progress.