This was the biggest medical trial ever carried out by the research company.
It involved providing packets of tablets to a great many sufferers for them to take as prescribed, over a set period. The tablets, based on a new formula, were painkillers that were developed to target backache. In this trial, half of the patients receive the new drug and the other half the placebo. This being a tablet of the exact shape and colour, with the same markings as the real thing. It’ll have no pharmacological effect whatsoever. The trial was being carried out at great cost to set it up and run it, with more than a million participating in the trial. Obviously, the security for this had to be one hundred percent for the trial to be regarded as proof of how effective the actual drug is.
For this reason, the file containing all relevant information, of which there was only one copy, was kept, password protected, by the company’s head statistician. This file contained the names and addresses of all the patients provided with tablets and lists indicating who received the drug and who received the placebo.
The trial was coming to an end and the statistician would collate all of the results and provide the relevant information at the company’s imminent board meeting. On the morning that saw the last results coming in from the administering doctors around the country, the statistician was busy preparing his report. Having opened the highly secured file with an extremely strong password, he was in the process of tallying…
…he sat staring out of his office window, thinking about the trip to Disneyland with his wife and children next year and how this was no longer likely to happen.
He was thinking about the extremely rare number of times he had inadvertently deleted a file that couldn’t be recovered throughout his entire lifetime.
He was thinking about attending the board meeting that was scheduled to take place during the afternoon.
He was imagining the look on the Chief Executive’s face when he was given the news.
He began to giggle.