A long time ago, people believed some crazy things. Acorns could bring good luck. Amber on a necklace could protect from disease. There were a whole bunch of ways to figure out who you were going to marry. Kissing a certain stone in Ireland will give you a glib tongue. There are several involving luck and black cats, depending on the culture. Clover can protect you from evil magic. A dried frog worn in a silk bag prevents epilepsy. And there are hundreds more. With the prevalence of science in our society, though, it is easy to find just as many modern superstitions, often based on misunderstandings about science.
A big enough particle accelerator could create a black hole that would swallow the Earth or at least a large portion of it. This superstition is based partially in truth. Scientists have predicted that the particle accelerator at CERN is indeed powerful enough to create microscopic black holes. If particles collide with enough energy, they can form a system with such high density that they technically form a black hole. Fortunately, black holes that small do not have enough mass to remain stable, and they evaporate almost instantly. Perhaps a bigger particle accelerator could create a stable black hole? It is incredibly unlikely, and it certainly could not happen on Earth. The problem is that black holes require enormous amounts of mass to be stable. All of the mass on Earth is not enough to create a stable black hole. The Sun may have enough mass to make a stable black hole, but it currently has far too much energy to collapse into one. There are three things that make it impossible for a particle accelerator on Earth to make a black hole that is stable and large enough to be a problem. The first is lack of sufficient matter. All of the mass of the Earth is still not enough. The second is too much energy. Even if Earth did have enough matter to make a black hole, if you tried to crush it down small enough, it would have so much energy that it would immediately explode when it was released. Third, the particle accelerator necessary to accelerate enough mass to create a stable black hole would not fit on the Earth, and it would probably not even fit on Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, and it is over 300 times larger than the Earth. This superstition has lost a lot momentum, since LHC scientists announced that the accelerator could not create dangerous black holes, but many people still believe it.
One of the two big ones is that "chemicals" are bad. Some people even claim that they don't believe in chemicals. This superstition is propagated by the media, which uses the term very narrowly to mean only chemicals that are dangerous. What they don't mention is that pretty much everything, even water, is a chemical or is made from chemicals. The source of this lack of understanding is school and parents that don't teach their children what the word actually means, though at this point the superstition is so entrenched that even most teachers don't know any better. What it really comes down to though, is that "chemical" means any element or compound in a homogeneous mixture. So, water is a pure mixture of the compound of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms. Salt water is the homogeneous solution of salt molecules dissolve in water molecules. It turns out, using a loose definition, even mud and bread dough could be considered chemicals. In addition, most of the dangerous chemicals you hear about in the media are also extremely useful. Contrast this with the fact that the human stomach produces copious amounts of hydrochloric acid, which is an extremely dangerous chemical.
There are several other very popular modern superstitions, including ones involving "organic" foods and "GMO" foods. Both of these are based largely on a misunderstanding of science, but both are also based very loosely on true ideas. It is possible to make edible plants harmful by exposing them to certain substances while they are growing. The "organic" food movement is based on the idea that organic fertilizers are safer than industrial ones. It turns out this is not true though. Most organic fertilizers come from biological processes that are poorly understood, which makes it very difficult to predict what dangerous substances might be in them. Industrial fertilizers tend to be fairly pure chemicals that are known to contain nothing dangerous. Now, there are some environmental concerns with using more pure fertilizers, but they don't negatively impact the quality of the food grown with them. Overall though, this particular superstition is not likely to cause more harm than wasting your money paying more for the same product, because it has a special label on it.
The GMO foods superstition is likely to be very dangerous in the future. The superstition here is that using scientific methods to precisely alter the genetics of plants makes them dangerous to eat. It is true that this could happen. Certain alterations could cause a plant to produce toxins that it would not have otherwise. Doing this deliberately would be extremely expensive though, and the mandatory FDA testing would quickly reveal the problem. A more worrying concern is that alterations intended to improve crop properties (which is what most GMO is for) could accidentally have side effects that would produce toxins. The fact, however, is that this is very unlikely, and it would still be caught by the mandatory testing. It turns out that, if anything, GMO foods are probably safer than non-GMO foods! There are several reasons for this. The first is that the way plants evolve naturally (nope, even in nature, plant DNA does not just stay exactly the same forever) is far more likely to produce a toxic strain than the very focused modification of one specific gene or set of genes. The second is that, if this did happen, we would probably not know until a lot of people were being affected, because there are no mandatory tests for non-GMO foods. So, how could believing the GMO superstition actually be dangerous though? Simple: There are currently two popular purposes for genetically modifying food plants. The first is improving crop properties. This includes things like making crops more resistant to pests and diseases (as in, now we don't have to use dangerous pesticides to maintain good yields), making food plants produce more food faster, and making crops more resilient to poor growing conditions. If society as a whole rejects GMO foods, we will have go back to using seriously poisonous pesticides, and we may eventually have a hard time growing enough food to feed everyone. GMO allows us to use less land to grow the same amount of food, and it allows us to use land that would otherwise have little value for growing food. Without GMO, the Earth's population cap is dramatically smaller. The second use of GMO that is starting to get more popular (you probably won't see it in stores for a while, because it is still experimental) is making food plants healthier and more tasty. In the next few years, many GMO foods will start to be available that are significantly more nutritious and tasty than non-GMO foods. (And, Monsanto, who I very pointedly do not endorse, for ethical reasons, is using GMO to create selective breeding plans, for using the natural method to get the same genetic modifications without making the food GMO.)
Humans are naturally superstitious. Eventually old superstitions are revealed for the absurdities that they are, but at the same time as we are making fun of the superstitions of our ancestors, we are subscribing to equally absurd ones of our own. So next time you laugh at a crazy superstition from a long time ago, give a thought to the modern superstitions that are affecting your own decisions.
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