According to a new study a shocking number of errors are made in genetics papers. The reason: the autoformat feature that defaults certain types of names to dates and other similar simple automatic formating errors. If you’ve ever published a paper with certain types of common abbreviations (the gene SEPT2 becomes 2-sep) you know just how easy it is for this type of error to creep in. The problem has been know for at least 12 years, and there are easy work-arounds, but no fix yet from Microsoft allowing you to permanently turn off this “feature”.
Science AAAS:
Washington Post Article:
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Scientific Articles:
ziemann etal 2016 zeeberg 2004
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Apparently, 1 in 5 genetics papers contain errors because of Excel
