Science Art: Photo de Proxima du Centaure, l’étoile la plus proche du Soleil…, Etienne Klein, 2022.

Scientific illustration of Proxima Centauri, or rather, a chorizo published as a star photo to illustrate that people trust social media too much.
Scientific illustration of Proxima Centauri, or rather, a chorizo published as a star photo to illustrate that people trust social media too much.

Maybe you saw this image on Twitter with a blurb like:

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.
Photo of Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun, located 4.2 light years from us.
She was taken by the JWST.
This level of detail… A new world is revealed day after day.

This is, in fact, a sliced chorizo sausage posted under false pretenses by Elliot Klein, a research director at CEA, a French government-funded center involved in everything from information technology to defense.

So why is an official scientist telling people Spanish sausage is really from the James Webb Space Telescope? Because, he says, we’re all far too willing to trust social media posts without looking at them critically.

He admitted the hoax almost immediately and went back to posting actual images of deep space wonders (and portraits of skeptical thinkers). Hopefully we all learned something.