"The joint operation, dubbed Operation Safe Pilot, fed in the names of 45,000 pilots in Northern California, cross-referenced them with the names of those who got any Social Security benefits, and came up with some 3,200 violators." Apparently this is probably but not certainly illegal in the US. I assume the UK's Data Protection Act would forbid this, but I'm not sure. One to watch.

"Somehow a highly-trained group of scientists at the start of the 20th century knew less about scurvy than the average sea captain in Napoleonic times. What happened?" A(nother) fascinating essay by Maciej Cegłowski.

Edzard Ernst, who co-wrote a book on alternative medicine with Simon Singh, examines the history of chiropractic and the evidence for its medical efficacy, both for back pain and for the wider range of ailments some of its practitioners claim it can deal with. For back pain, "there is some encouraging evidence", but that's as good as it gets.