[Sigia-l] Outsmarting users

[Listera]

The culprit is a familiar one, nevertheless, a cautionary tale for all
UI/app designers:

"Genetic research is being hampered by a smart formatting function in Excel,
according to US researchers.

The problem, which can cause medically important genes to be hidden from
view, is widespread, and has affected some public databases, including the
gene expression data on the NCBI LocusLink database in the US, the
researchers say.

Excel is widely used in genetic research to process microarray data. A
microarray chip detects amounts of protein produced from thousands of
different genes, enabling researchers to see which particular gene is being
expressed in a sample of diseased tissue, for example.

The errors are introduced because some genetic identifiers look very like
dates to Excel. If the spreadsheet is not properly set up, it will convert
an identifier, such as SEPT2 to a date: 2-Sep. The conversion, the
researchers say, is irreversible: once the error has been introduced, the
original data is gone."

Excel ate my DNA 
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/16/excel_vanishing_dna/>

Ziya
Nullius in Verba