Hi Boot,I used to own an environmental analysis laboratory. The...

Hi Boot,
I used to own an environmental analysis laboratory. The normal procedure is
1. Samples collected in field and labelled there by collector
2. Samples sent to mining field office and dispatched to lab. No change in labelling but a spreadsheet showing samples and required analysis is prepared and sent with samples (sometimes also emailed seperately)
3. On arrival at lab, samples age given lab numbers which correlate with field numbers, but are generally different numbers. The lab numbers usually generated automatically from lab Lims system and then attached to bottles (either stick on bar code or write manually)

There are a number of steps where this can go wrong. Most environmental scientist are also, shall we say "chemically challenged" and dont immediately see when results are rubbish - they just assume they must be right. After all
they have a bit of paper which says so, dont they?.