Automatic Data Conversion, a technology that previously transformed specific human gene names into dates and caused significant errors in scientific studies, can now be disabled.
Each of the almost 44,000 human genes has an abbreviated name as well as a symbol.
Each of the almost 44,000 human genes has an abbreviated name as well as a symbol.
When a scientist wrote SEPT1 in an Excel sheet to represent the Septin-1 gene, the programme assumed they meant September 1 and changed it.
And if you've ever had to search through an Excel file, you know how easy it is to overlook a minor error like this.
But those minor mistakes added up to enormous problems.
But those minor mistakes added up to enormous problems.
A review of 10,000 scientific papers on genes published between 2014 and 2020 discovered that more than 30% of them contained a gene name error caused by Excel.
It got so bad that by 2020, the gene naming regulating board had altered 27 gene names so they couldn't be mistyped in the Microsoft programme (for example, SEPT1 became SEPTIN1).
You may now customise Excel's auto-correcting functions.
How to disable it: Under File>Options>Data,
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