A world-renowned French physicist was forced to apologize after tweeting out a picture of a slice of chorizo, claiming it was a picture of a distant star taken by the James Webb Space Telescope.
Etienne Klein decided to have some fun with his nearly 92,000 followers, tweeting out what seemed to be a high-resolution image of a star.
“Picture of Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun, located 4.2 light years away from us. It was taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. This level of detail… A new world is unveiled everyday,” he tweeted in French.
Photo de Proxima du Centaure, l’étoile la plus proche du Soleil, située à 4,2 année-lumière de nous.
Elle a été prise par le JWST.
Ce niveau de détails… Un nouveau monde se dévoile jour après jour. pic.twitter.com/88UBbHDQ7Z— Etienne KLEIN (@EtienneKlein) July 31, 2022
Just an hour later, after letting his followers indulge in the magnificence of the supposed extraterrestrial image, Klein replied to the tweet with a joking response.
“Well, when it’s cocktail hour, cognitive bias seem to find plenty to enjoy… Beware of it. According to contemporary cosmology, no object related to Spanish charcuterie exists anywhere else other than on Earth,” he wrote.
He was forced to clarify further several hours later, with many believing that he himself, a respected scientist of his field, had been duped by such a simple prank. He told his followers that actually it was meant as a joke all along, both for his own amusement and to teach a lesson about trusting arguments from positions of authority.
“In view of certain comments, I feel obliged to specify that this tweet showing an alleged picture of Proxima Centauri was a joke. Let’s learn to be wary of the arguments from positions of authority as much as the spontaneous eloquence of certain images,” he tweeted.