--- title: Scientific datasets are riddled with copy-paste errors description: A developer built software to detect copy-paste errors in scientific Excel datasets and scanned 600 published papers. The tool found 18 serious cases,... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/scientific-datasets-are-riddled-with-copy-paste-errors-g7xiozoez twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Scientific datasets are riddled with copy-paste errors | daily.dev og:description: A developer built software to detect copy-paste errors in scientific Excel datasets and scanned 600 published papers. The tool found 18 serious cases,... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/scientific-datasets-are-riddled-with-copy-paste-errors-g7xiozoez og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/g7xiOZoEz.png og:image:alt: Scientific datasets are riddled with copy-paste errors og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Scientific datasets are riddled with copy-paste errors **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 15 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A developer built software to detect copy-paste errors in scientific Excel datasets and scanned 600 published papers. The tool found 18 serious cases, including a landmark Parkinson's disease paper with duplicated mouse measurements, a toxin-resistance study with ostrich/snake data mixups, and a fish behavior study with scrambled size values. About 3% of scanned datasets contained detectable errors. The project, now funded by a $50K grant, plans to scan ~24,000 more datasets on the Dryad repository. The post highlights a systemic gap in scientific peer review where no one is actively checking raw data for integrity issues. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Code audits in R&D-driven applications](https://daily.dev/posts/code-audits-in-r-d-driven-applications-ayfgg1q15) · Data Science Central · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [What We Learned by Reproducing 2,200 papers from ICML](https://daily.dev/posts/what-we-learned-by-reproducing-2-200-papers-from-icml-buot4npxf) · Hugging Face · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/scientific-datasets-are-riddled-with-copy-paste-errors-g7xiozoez) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Scientific datasets are riddled with copy-paste errors","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/scientific-datasets-are-riddled-with-copy-paste-errors-g7xiozoez","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/scientific-datasets-are-riddled-with-copy-paste-errors-g7xiozoez"},"datePublished":"2026-04-20T06:50:00.337Z","dateModified":"2026-04-20T06:50:29.557Z","description":"A developer built software to detect copy-paste errors in scientific Excel datasets and scanned 600 published papers. 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