Cleaner accidentally ruins decades of research by turning off freezer
theguardian.comCommon situation. Crammed labs and busy to death researchers fighting for each inch of freeze storage.
They had a 25 years for splitting the irreplaceable samples into a backup copy. The problem is that spending time in management that does not produce papers is normally frowned upon and seen as procrastinating in science. A serious effort is still missing to introduce sample backups by routine on lab cultures and protocols.
They are fighting for storage because funding agencies only pay for new research, not the preservation of old research funded by someone else.
-80s aren't normally used as archives, rather they usually contain engineered strains of various organisms that would take a very long time to recreate.
How did Covid restrictions prevent repairs to the system not prevent this cleaner from accessing the same area?