ChorizoGate: an Accidental Hoax
My Twitter account is usually a quiet backwater of social media, and that’s the way I like it, but there was an unexpected burst of activity and interest in it over the weekend. To amuse myself on Saturday morning I decided to post this on Twitter:
I thought a few people might find it funny, but it took off beyond my expectations. By my standards over 5000 likes counts as “going viral” (as you young people say). Most people saw the joke immediately – if you don’t get it, the image is of a slice of chorizo not an astronomical object – and some even joined in with puns and other jokes. Even funnier, some respondents earnestly shared their devastating insight that it was chorizo (or some variant thereof). I honestly didn’t think anyone would think that I was seriously trying to pass it off as a JWST picture; it was just meant to be silly. But there you go. That’s Twitter. I should also report that some people looked at the rainbow flags in my profile and proceeded to indulge in some casual homophobia. That’s Twitter too. Those people all got blocked.
Anyway, the day after I posted the image it seems a prominent French physicist called Etienne Klein who has many times more Twitter followers than I do, posted this embellished version. TRIGGER WARNING – it’s in FRENCH:
Notice the picture is exactly the same. What a coincidence! You might consider this plagiarism; I couldn’t possibly comment. I always regard anything I put on social media as being in the public domain so I’m not really bothered if other people “borrow” it. There’s quite a lot of plagiarism of stuff I’ve written on this blog out there, but life’s too short to get upset about it. Credit would be courteous, but one one learns that it isn’t generally to be expected.
As a matter of fact it’s not a new joke anyway. I didn’t make the picture and don’t remember where I got it from, though it was probably here.
Anyway, the funny thing is that this then got picked up by various other people:
and organisations:
There are others, e.g. here, here, here and here. Also here.
ChorizoGate all took off in a very surprising way. I’m not sure what the moral of this story is, other than if you make a joke no matter how obvious it is there will always be people who take it seriously…
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In the Dark 
August 4, 2022 at 4:30 pm
Chorizo is the Greek for ‘separate’. I got a shock when I was studying chapter 7 of St Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church and found that a Christian woman who is chorizo should remain single or be reconciled to her husband. I then wondered how the sausage got its name; it is because the fat and the meat separate out from each other during the curing process.
August 4, 2022 at 7:52 pm
It’s all Greek to me.
August 5, 2022 at 12:30 pm
So is plenty of mathematics.
August 5, 2022 at 12:37 pm
Wikipedia gives a different origin:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorizo#Name
August 5, 2022 at 3:40 pm
Ha! I wonder what online source (for I remember looking) gave me that explanation. I wouldn’t bet on which is correct.
It is wasted when grilled, as Wikipedia mentions it can be – best as is.
Your photo is a lot higher resolution than the others, and a lot more obviously chorizo in consequence. A side view might have made it more obvious…
August 5, 2022 at 3:42 pm
It’s rather nice in stews with beans etc but I prefer it sliced with a nice glass of wine as an aperitivo…
August 5, 2022 at 11:06 pm
That’s no way to treat your research students.
August 5, 2022 at 8:07 am
I hope their are some suitably reddened faces in the twitterverse !
August 5, 2022 at 12:57 pm
https://edition.cnn.com/videos/us/2022/08/05/sausage-prank-telescope-star-moos-pkg-vpx.cnn link graphic was your photo.
August 5, 2022 at 3:24 pm
[…] A blog about the Universe, and all that surrounds it « ChorizoGate: an Accidental Hoax […]
August 6, 2022 at 6:29 am
Congratulations Peter, this has reached the front page of the Daily Star!
They’ve not tracked it to you yet; here’s the story:
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/tech/news/scientists-deep-space-image-distant-27668854
August 6, 2022 at 10:42 am
It’s even on the RTE website. Even in Ireland they’re not mentioning me! https://www.rte.ie/news/newslens/2022/0805/1314229-space-chorizo/
August 6, 2022 at 3:37 pm
Impressive damage control PR by Klein. All articles make it sound like he originally came up with the prank instead of embarrassingly falling for it.
August 6, 2022 at 6:31 am
And The Times:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/space-image-was-a-slice-of-chorizo-says-scientist-in-fake-news-warning-sbsxx8cph
I suppose we believe him. Don’t we?
August 6, 2022 at 10:43 am
I’m not at all sure!
He’s a philosopher, so who knows what goes on inside his head?
August 6, 2022 at 10:51 am
I assume the lack of correct citations in many of these repeat stories means they don’t meet the ethics criteria for publication in OJA?
August 6, 2022 at 11:30 am
[…] ChorizoGate […]
August 6, 2022 at 12:41 pm
What’s the redshift?
August 6, 2022 at 12:42 pm
I don’t know but I think it’s at the confusion limit…
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[…] Witz von vor vier Jahren geklaut worden und wurde wiederum hier geklaut … worüber seither mehr oder weniger sinnvoll auf der ganzen Welt geschrieben wird. [22:15 […]
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[…] that the social media fuss about ChorizoGate is dying down a bit I thought I’d change the subject and post some music. This tune is by Los […]
August 10, 2022 at 8:47 pm
[…] Si estás interesado en leer más te recomiendo Peter Coles, «ChorizoGate: an Accidental Hoax,» In The Dark, 03 Aug 2022; Peter Coles, «The Dark Side of ChorizoGate,» In The Dark, 08 Aug […]
August 11, 2022 at 9:00 am
[…] sesgada de esta historia memética) te recomiendo Peter Coles, «ChorizoGate: an Accidental Hoax,» In The Dark, 03 Aug 2022; Peter Coles, «The Dark Side of ChorizoGate,» In The Dark, 08 Aug […]
August 11, 2022 at 5:10 pm
[…] far as misinformation goes, Klein’s joke (which an astrophysicist, Peter Coles, made first) was innocuous enough. And it was a pretty good joke. But like much viral misinformation, the space […]
August 11, 2022 at 9:11 pm
[…] far as misinformation goes, Klein’s joke (which an astrophysicist, Peter Coles, made first) was innocuous sufficient. And it was a reasonably good joke. However like a lot viral […]
August 12, 2022 at 4:48 pm
I find disturbing that nobody mentions the origin of the picture, which is the lunar eclipse of some years ago. The usage of the same picture is presented as if it were a very big coincidence.
August 12, 2022 at 5:40 pm
There’s a link to what I think is the origin of the picture in this very blog post.
The coincidence is that Klein posted his version just a day after mine.
August 12, 2022 at 7:38 pm
[…] As Coles explains on his Telescoper blog, he posted the image on 30 July with the caption “Those JWST images just get better and better”, whereas Klein tweeted the same photo on 31 July. Coles, however, admits that it wasn’t even his image in the first place. “I didn’t make the picture and don’t remember where I got it from, though it was probably here,” he writes on his blog, referring to a tweet from 2018 by a user called Jan Castelmiller, who claimed the chorizo was the red-coloured “blood” Moon seen during a lunar eclipse. […]
August 14, 2022 at 9:01 am
[…] As Coles explains on his Telescoper blog, he posted the image on 30 July with the caption “Those JWST images just get better and better”, whereas Klein tweeted the same photo on 31 July. Coles, however, admits that it wasn’t even his image in the first place. “I didn’t make the picture and don’t remember where I got it from, though it was probably here,” he writes on his blog, referring to a tweet from 2018 by a user called Jan Castelmiller, who claimed the chorizo was the red-coloured “blood” Moon seen during a lunar eclipse. […]
August 19, 2022 at 2:20 pm
[…] just like ChorizoGate, the picture in question was first circulated a few years ago (in 2019) and was also apparently […]
August 22, 2022 at 2:09 pm
[…] in Tempe, who is the principal investigator for one of Danuri’s instruments, called ShadowCam.ChorizoGate: an Accidental HoaxMy Twitter account is usually a quiet backwater of social media, and that’s the way I like it, but […]
October 10, 2022 at 10:33 pm
Congrats! This made it even to the S19-E13 of American Dad!, “The Fast and the Spurious” 🙂
January 1, 2023 at 12:41 pm
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