How are these non-experts getting started? If they are in academia, academia should start teaching these practical things too. (Yes, I know the problem is that many old school bigwig researchers are doing even worse things.)
There are people of all sorts: amateurs that want to play with the data but will not make study of it their primary field, trainees that will make use of tabular data extensively in their career, and then experts in more rarefied fields (e.g. immunology, clinicians, etc.)
If I can get a trained immunologist looking at my data, I'd much rather have 5 more minutes of their analytical skills than teaching them about common data exchange pitfalls.
