“People’s behavior and negligence caused all this,” Michael Ginsberg, an attorney for RPI, told the Times Union. “Unfortunately, they wiped out 25 years of research.”

I agree. It was people's negligence: the researcher's. They weren't serious about protecting their stuff. They keept important samples in a broken freezer, without lab UPS equipment. They did not rush to get someone to repair the freezer immediately. Did not transfer to another freezer...did not have a backup freezer.

Blaming the janitor is the proffesional researcher equivalent of "the dog ate my homework".