"There are lots of better alternatives," Neil Saunders, a data scientist who
sounded the alarm about genetic mishaps with Excel back in 2012, told
The Register today. "But Excel is on their computers and they feel familiar with it, even if they can't actually use it properly. Biologists in particular are reluctant to invest time in learning programming skills."
[...]
"It's often pointed out that the problem is entirely avoidable, by setting Excel column type when importing CSV files," Saunders told us. "But no one does this – they just click on a file name, it opens in Excel – boom, the damage is done." He blames Microsoft for the blunders. "Really I think the issue is that non-explicit auto-conversion of data types is a bad default software behavior."
"Personally I think that changing the gene symbols is not a great solution," Saunders told us. "But given that Microsoft won't change its default Excel behavior and 16-plus years of attempts to educate biologists on the issue have failed, I suppose it is a practical solution."