Has Science Become Infected With Microsoft Excel Syndrome?

25 Aug
2016
25 Aug
'16
9:13 a.m.
Seems like Microsoft Excel has become an accepted tool for researchers to crunch numbers with, in spite of its obvious pitfalls. I thought it was only economists who fell into this trap <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130417/02263922736/intellectual-bulwark-austerity-economics-collapses-because-three-major-errors.shtml>. But it turns out other scientists do, too <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/25/excel_hell_messes_up_20_per_cent_of_genetic_science_papers/>. What’s worse is that this is hardly a new observation <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140727/03133828025/using-spreadsheets-bioinformatics-can-corrupt-data-changing-gene-names-into-dates.shtml>. I thought science was a process of learning from experience?
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Lawrence D'Oliveiro