Assorted other superstition from the week 14-20/5/12

[video] Favouritism of Organic foods is entirely superstitious! Organic farming basically means predominantly employing outdated techniques - they're not intrinsically safer, and they're probably *less* healthy. The term 'organic' isn't even legally binding, so they could easily be covered in insecticide anyway!
http://youtu.be/H3CoIqpyPYY

[Audio] Another folk superstition that i really hate - opposition to GM food. Genetic modification has been done for millennia - all it means is selecting for genes in the plant/animal/whatever it is. There isn't a vegetable in a market in the country that hasn't been modified! All that's different about 'GM' is that the changes are deliberate - not left to chance - which makes them safer and more accurate, by my reckoning!
Sense About Science’s Sile Lane and Tracy Brown took a trip to Rothamsted Research in Harpenden to see what they're really doing in there.
http://poddelusion.co.uk/blog/2012/05/13/sense-about-science-trip-to-rothamsted/

The Unsinkable Rubber Duckies
James Randi on frauds, and the horrible things they do. And somehow their deceit manages to get people to defend them!
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2012/05/opinion-randi-frauds/

The Daily Fail, The Grauniad, and The Torygraph, all reported a cancer test that could test for cancer early. But will it work? Can it work? Margaret McCartney assesses its potential
http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e3374.full?ijkey=sqaAovHsp8mtpqB&keytype=ref

Don't use Black Salve! It's incredibly dangerous - it burns away your skin, cancer and *all* - leaving you exposed to infections! No wonder Meryl Dorey loves it (she's the PTSD-ish lunatic who think vaccines cause autism, cancer... just about anything that isn't immunity against diseases!)
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Cancer/eschar.html

[video] Stop Freaking Out Over Plastic Bottles: They’re Not Leaching Toxins Into Your Water!
http://lifehacker.com/5909676/stop-freaking-out-over-plastic-bottles-theyre-not-leeching-poison-into-your-water

Alternative medicine superstition's threatening Malaysian tigers *as well*
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-poaching-pressure-malayan-tiger.html

Iran's trying to sue Google because it dropped the name of that stretch of water that's called the Persian Gulf by Iranians and the Arabian Gulf by Arabs. Ridiculous, isn't it!
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-iran-sue-google-persian-gulf.html