Plausible scenario from a comment in the science.org post linked in another thread:

> If the MIT student was doing some work with reactive stuff and mercury and got an unknown result well outside expectations out of the output they were expecting i can see them struggling through working out what it could be, coming to the conclusion Dimethylmercury was possibble as an accidental side product of what went wrong, and just pulling all the emergency handles to be safe. Given how nasty that stuff is that is exactly the kind of reaction to such a scenario you'd want someone to have.