The media afterburn from the scandal of the Sophie Toscan du Plantier murder regularly reignites and titillates – and has done over the past 25 years.      The prurient stories are often a toxic cocktail of factoids (an item of unreliable information that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact) blended with pseudo forensic science. And the Ian Bailey-Toscan du Plantier tittle-tattle will celebrate its silver anniversary on December 23. Remembering the brutal murder of a beautiful French woman in an idyllic cottage in remote west Cork two days before Christmas in 1996 will inevitably recall the…