Lead author Metin Eren, director of archaeology and assistant professor of anthropology at Kent State, fully committed to the task, eating a high-protein diet typical of the Inuit for eight days and preserving his excrement. Armed with this weaponized fecal matter, Eren tried to mimic how the Inuit would have used such a tool, attempting to cut into animal hide with it—in this case, pig hide. “…Our results suggest that knives manufactured from frozen human feces are not functional,” Eren writes, adding that “we gave our knives the best possible chance to succeed and they still could not function.”