Speaking with LiveScience, Metin Eren, director of the Eren Laboratory of Experimental Archaeology at Kent State University, said this gross anecdote about a man killing a canine in the cold with a self-made doo-doo blade inspired him to become an anthropologist. Obviously not content with letting sleeping dogs lie, he decided to investigate whether a blade made of feces could feasibly put a dog to sleep. To prepare for the experiment, Eren spent eight days on an “arctic diet” consisting of foods rich in protein and fatty acids. Once his feces reached a consistency that seemed consistent with Inuit poop, his colleagues froze it to a bone-chilling negative-58 degrees Fahrenheit (negative-50 degrees Celsius).

After sharpening the poop with metal files investigators tried to slice through a refrigerated pig hide. Eren was apparently impressed by the hardness of his turds, remarking, “I was surprised at how hard human feces could get when frozen. I started to think, ‘Oh my gosh, this might actually work!'” It didn’t. In his words, “Like a crayon, it just left brown streaks on the meat.” Next, study collaborator Michelle Bebber gave it ago, presumably to rule out the possibility that Eren was a defective defecator. Alas, her ice deuce also didn’t cut the mustard, which in this case was pork. So it appears that Eren’s anthropology career was founded on a lie. But even if crappy knives probably can’t kill a dog, they produced a study with a killer title: “Experimental replication shows knives manufactured from frozen human feces do not work.”