Duplicate 'row.names' error reading table. row.names=NULL shifts columns

Question

This is similar to read.csv row.names and to https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12425599/duplicated-row-names , but I do not see answers that help.

Problem: Trying

Answer 1

I used the following code:

lm.table  <- read.table("file name", header=TRUE, row.names=NULL)

This added a column to the left with numbered row names, but I didn't find that the column names were shifted. Could it be that your column names still matched the right columns, but the R output made it look like the names had shifted?