I guess this classifies as one of those ‘Oops!’ moments! According to the Daily Mail:
A university has apologised to a scientist for throwing away his treasured collection of lizard faeces.
Graduate biologist Daniel Bennett, who spent seven years combing inhospitable jungles to amass his unique hoard, was told the 77lb bag had been thrown out during a lab clear-out.
It was meant to help him in the pursuit of his doctorate at Leeds University on the rare Butaan lizard, a little-known species of Monitor lizard that is related to the fearsome Komodo dragon.
Mr Bennett said: ‘To some people it might have been just a bag of lizard s***, but to me it represented seven years of painstaking work searching the rainforest with a team of reformed poachers to find the faeces of one of the world’s largest, rarest and most mysterious lizards.’
The methods conventionally used to study the Komodo dragon are not suitable for the much more reclusive Butaan.
Mr Bennett, author of several books on Monitor lizards and a leading authority on the Butaan, collected and analysed the faeces as a way of studying the reptiles without disturbing them.
He said: ‘Whether it was the largest collection of lizard s*** in the world is uncertain, but it certainly contained the only dietary sample from that little-known species Varanus olivaceus, and probably the most complete dietary record of any single population of animals in South-East Asia.’
Today, only one square mile of habitat for the Butaan lizard remains on Polillo Island in the Philippines.
Mr Bennett said he was horrified when he returned from fieldwork to find his bag of samples had been removed.
‘Its loss left me reeling and altered the course of my life forever,’ he told the Times Higher Education Supplement.
Mr Bennett, whose TV special on the Butaan has been aired on wildlife channels, said he had turned down an offer of £500 in compensation by the university and intended to ‘see them in court’.
Leeds University bosses admitted the gaffe, saying in a statement: ‘The loss of these samples was an unfortunate mistake. They were thrown away in error because they were in an unmarked bag.’
It added: ‘Lessons have been learned and protocols improved to ensure this cannot happen again.’
The university says Mr Bennett will be awarded his PhD this year ‘subject to minor corrections to his thesis unrelated to the loss of the materials’.
At least they’re giving him his doctorate. It would have been too much to throw away his samples and then deny him the degree as a result.
On the other hand, if I’d been on the cleaning staff, and discovered an unlabelled bag filled with almost eighty pounds of smelly, decaying lizard droppings, I’d have dumped it too!
Peter
An unmarked bag containing something so critical to his work? Apparently common sense is not a part of his doctoral work. I can empathize with his situation, but good luck getting that one to fly in court.
Shit happens, they say.
Man. I knew you had to put up with a lot of shit to get your doctorates, but that’s saying something.
Flushed it right down the commodo, they did.
Somehow I doubt it was nearly as unmarked as they’re claiming, if it was that important to his research.
But even if it were, I’d certainly have checked before I tossed something that massive away – after all, if such a quantity has been put in someone’s office, it’s either a very bad prank, or it’s very important. Better to check with someone higher up the chain, in either case.