Software is subbing mistakes into scientific papers

MICROSOFT EXCEL’SCHMARCH1SEPT1E41DEC2 zeal for autocorrection has long irritated casual users. Lists of numbers preceded by dashes are misread as instructions to subtract. Phone numbers lose their leading zeroes. Credit-card numbers get re-expressed in scientific notation.Geneticists struggle with a particular version of this problem. A gene called Membrane Associated Ring--type finger 1, commonly known as , is, for instance, frequently re-encoded as the date March 1. Something similar happens to genes in the Septin family, of which is a member, and to Basic Helix-Loop-Helix Family Member , often known as .