Reminder about Excel and research
Never use Excel for important research
It is malware!
> Gene name errors are widespread in the scientific literature
https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-016-1044-7
> The spreadsheet software Microsoft Excel, when used with default settings, is known to convert gene names to dates and floating-point numbers. A programmatic scan of leading genomics journals reveals that approximately one-fifth of papers with supplementary Excel gene lists contain erroneous gene name conversions.
Reminder about Excel and research
@bgcarlisle People don't talk nearly enough about That Time An Excel Error Caused Europe To Think Austerity Might Work.
Even now they wonder again whether austerity will return and not a mention of how the stupid economists behind the concept had just completely fucked up in Excel and caused mass impoverishment.
Excel: not even once
re: Reminder about Excel and research
@cathal @bgcarlisle What's austerity in this context?
re: Reminder about Excel and research
@Felthry @bgcarlisle
It's difficult to answer the question as you have framed it. But, this article may offer the needed context:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/18/uncovered-error-george-osborne-austerity
re: Reminder about Excel and research
@cathal @bgcarlisle hmm. we don't know anything about financial politics other than "money is a thing that we would be better off without" so i don't really understand much of that article, honestly.
Impression I get is "paper said thing was bad because other thing, politician tried to change other thing to make thing good, then it turned out thing was actually perfectly fine all along and changing other thing made thing worse"?
re: Reminder about Excel and research
@Felthry @bgcarlisle That's the official version of events. It's widely felt that "Politicians did self serving thing, to everyone else's detriment, using heterodox economics paper as excuse, continued doing it when paper was found to be fallacious, because paper's conclusions supported their otherwise unsupportable social notions".
Either way the paper was trash and the actions taken on its basis were, at best, unhelpful.