How to prevent horizontal scrolling from switching apps and desktops

[Wendell Nichols]

I use fedora on a thinkpad with a synaptics touch pad mouse.  I find it 
to be very good except for one thing; an accidental gesture across the 
mousepad will cause the desktop so switch between applicaitons on the 
current desktop, or, depending where the mouse is, to scroll across 
desktops.  This results in a flurry of motion on the screen and then 
leaves me to find which of the 8 desktops I was on, an then which of the 
8 or 10 apps per desktop I was using.  ya I have a busy system which is 
why I use linux!
Is there any way to disable this behavior?  I've installed the touchpad 
tool and it did not help do disable horizontal scrolling.
your ideas will be welcome :)
wendell nichols