During his PhD, a researcher needed to use a certain cell. He searched for the cell line in an inventory shared with the whole department and started growing the cells. He performed an expensive mass spectrometry experiment using the cell line, just to find out afterwards that the cell line was not the one it was supposed to be due to mislabelling. Since his PhD contract was about to end, there unfortunately was no time to solve the problem.

This could be avoided by correctly labelling samples and verifying the sample before using it for any experiments. The management of physical samples, i.e. their verification, correct labeling and entry into a physical and digital inventory is an essential part of research data management and it is very important that these steps are done properly and documented well.