Brains of Britain

A mix-up in a fridge corrupted Britain’s longest-running experiment to see if
sheep could catch BSE. The four-year project crashed in October when it emerged
that researchers had apparently used cow brains, not sheep brains (New
Scientist, 27 October, p 14). Two independent audits of the bungled
experiment slammed the Institute for Animal Health in Edinburgh, which had
stored the samples since 1992. One concluded that the mix-up probably happened
in 1997 when technicians took the wrong samples from the fridge. The other
audit, accused the institute of substandard labelling and record keeping.