The mistake that happened here is the kind of thing you explain to students the first time they're in the lab. It's really obvious and something everyone should

The mistake that happened here is the kind of thing you explain to students the first time they're in the lab. It's really obvious and something everyone should know that uses a UV/Vis spectrometer. And of course the method itself is suspect, as the main benefit is that it is cheap and quick, not accurate. And then taking the wrongly performed measurement with the worse method over the qPCR by the manufacturer (who likely has much more robust QC than someone in academia) is just insane.