I was getting a tour of a lab from a grad student, and I was told a desk was full of 3.5" floppies with data from old research. I said "Wait, what? Old floppies

I was getting a tour of a lab from a grad student, and I was told a desk was full of 3.5" floppies with data from old research. I said "Wait, what? Old floppies won't retain data indefinitely!" and got shushed -- she didn't want to wind up responsible for trying to do data recovery on hundreds of floppy disks, which would do jack for getting her to her Ph.D. Rot is a very big part of what happens to a lot of information.