Question: What is the most unusual thing that has ever happened or you have seen in an investigation?

Aileen Baird answered on 7 Mar 2018:

Oooh good question! I work in microbiology which means I work with micro-organisms. Usually when you work in a lab with micro-organisms you only have one species (or type) of micro-organism that you are investigating, but sometimes you get contamination which means that a different species of micro-organism is growing. Getting contamination is quite common, but it can be quite difficult and tricky to work out why something is growing! Sometimes you get really unusual species contaminating and that can be really interesting in itself!

Another thing I can think of is using weird equipment, for example yesterday when we were on the field side, our method for taking soil samples involved sieves and teaspoons!