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Uhm … ew?
A British student, Daniel Bennett, is involved in a legal battle with the university where he’s a grad student, Leeds University. Over 77 pounds of lizard shit.
He had collected the samples from remote areas of the Philippines as part of an investigation into the rare Butaan lizard.
The animal - a close relative of the Komodo dragon - was assumed extinct for more than 100 years and little is known about it.
Mr Bennett spent five years investigating their diet, population size and behaviour by sifting through excrement found on the jungle floor.
He then won a scholarship at Leeds where he was paid to analyse more samples at the university’s faculty of biological sciences.
But two years into his PhD he returned from fieldwork to find his collection had been “accidentally” thrown away by technicians clearing space in a laboratory.
Eighteen months after finding that he was missing his ginormeous bag of lizard shit, the University issued a formal apology and offered Bennett £500. He declined the cash, and now that he’s completed his thesis, he’s suing the school.
Over lizard shit.
Comments
As someone who did a PhD in a facility run by monkeys, I say good for him. This happened to a classmate of mine; careless cleaning staff destroyed biomedical samples representing years of work, and said "sorry for the inconvenience", but you'll just have to spend some more years (and pay tuition for them) redoing it. I hope he wins big.
Posted by Go Daniel! | March 13, 2009 1:27 PM
What difference does it make what kind of shit it is. Don't fuck with my shit!
Posted by Dredge Slug | March 13, 2009 2:35 PM
I say good for him too - if you're going to spend thousands of dollars collecting samples to write about, WHATEVER THEY ARE, nobody should be able to dump them and offer you 500 quid as recompense. Sue their asses, there's no way they'd waive the tuition for you to start over just because of their mistake.
Posted by Anne (in Reno) | March 25, 2009 2:10 PM
I lost my entire thesis project a couple years ago because the janitorial staff unplugged my incubator, so I am rooting for him, too! The time and effort, in addition to the money, makes that lizard shit pretty much priceless. Who wants to delay real life three more years?
Posted by Phaeolus | March 25, 2009 10:35 PM