NHS England will post free cervical screening kits to millions of women who missed their appointments. The kits catch a common virus early. Early is when you can still do something. That part of the story is settled and I will not linger on it.
My lab tested the kits for six months. They work. The swab is simple. The results are accurate. A great many lives will be saved. Moving on.
On Thursday we found the real result. The return box is a fraction too wide for six per cent of British letterboxes. A letterbox is the slot in a door where post goes. Ours were sized in another century, and now history has come to collect.
We checked the numbers twice. The odds of this being a fluke are under one in twenty. That is the line past which a scientist is permitted to be afraid.
