What does Excel and an Incel Have in Common — and How does this Screw with Science?

Photo by Franck V. on Unsplash

There’s been a joke circulating of late:

What does Excel have in common with an incel?

Answer: They both think something’s a date when it isn’t.

Excel has a certain notoriety for looking for dates and auto formatting them. And sometimes it will even decide that cell is a date forever and you have to delete an entire row or column to get it to believe you. Excel can be insanely stubborn about dates.

Photo by Louis Reed on Unsplash

So, How does this Affect Science?

Specifically, Excel’s stubbornness about dates affects genetics.

So, here’s an example.

Membrane Associated Ring-CH-Type Finger 1. This is a not very sexy gene involved in protein management in multiple species including humans, horses, and dogs.

The approved symbol for this gene was MARCH-1.

Type that into Excel and it auto-converts to 1-Mar. You can’t globally turn this off. You have to remember to turn it off for the specific cells, at least at the row/column level. Then you export…