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Boffins don't give a sh!t, slap Trump's face on a turd in science journal

A pair of boffins are in hot water after the image of President Donald Trump made an unexpected cameo in a paper on how to gather animal DNA from their poop at scale.

The paper [open, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-20427-9] [DX], which was published in Nature Scientific Reports, discusses the difficulties of gaining high-quality DNA samples from wild animals in a non-invasive way. Feces is the obvious option, but it is dominated by DNA from other organisms, such as bacteria – so the authors proposed a way to enrich the desired animal's DNA from the sample.

However, the pair also buried an Easter egg in a figure depicting the method, which shows a baboon sitting next to an average-sized turd. And on that turd, is a tiny image of the leader of the free world.

[...] Here's a close-up of the image in question:

pic.twitter.com/gw9Ix3EPcu

— Alec Muffett (@AlecMuffett) December 17, 2018

[...] "The editors have become aware of unusual aspects to the 'Extract fecal DNA' illustration in figure 1. We are investigating, and appropriate editorial action will be taken once the matter is resolved," a note said.

Here is the graphic referenced:

Figure 1: | Scientific Reports

Original Submission