This Sociological Life

Jonah Pike lingered at the end, the way the keen ones always did, bag already half-packed. He wasn't technically one of yours - a holiday research assistant the department had taken on for the summer, paid buttons to enter data into spreadsheets nobody above him seemed keen to explain - but he came to every open lecture anyway, on his own time.

"Professor Hume's data," he said, carefully. "The stuff I've been coding for Project Candour. I keep getting told which bits are 'sensitive' and shouldn't go in my notes. Nobody tells me why."

"Research ethics committees exist for exactly that kind of question," you said, which was true, and also not really an answer, and you both knew it.

"I asked the ethics committee," said Jonah. "They said Professor Hume's project has its own 'enhanced confidentiality protocol'." He said the phrase like it tasted wrong in his mouth. "That's not really an answer either, is it."

Your phone rang before you could decide how much of that observation to agree with out loud.