A NASA photo error showed just how many sheep in science media are blindly regurgitating anything about space they read.
NASA got a snapshot from Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko on the International Space Station, 230 miles above Earth, wrong, saying a summit in India was Mount Everest rather than what it really was, Saser Muztagh in the Karakoram Range of the Kashmir region of India. It could have been worse, they could have put Mt. McKinley in Europe or something.
Who got suckered into repeating it? Space.com, The Atlantic, MSNBC and plenty of others who only now realize why you don't get your news from offhand claims on Twitter and rewrite stories based on that. BMJ pulls a Christmas prank on the science media - I mean you, BBC - who blindly rehash press releases (see Testosterone Is Why Men Try To Be Funny for their unicycle study) every year but at least they are doing it on purpose.
Who tripped up NASA and all those corporate media sites? Actual people from Nepal, who make on average 0.25% of what a NASA employee and writers in corporate science media make. Journalist Kunda Dixit tweeted, “Sorry guys, but the tall peak with the shadow in the middle is not Mt Everest” and yesterday NASA took the picture down.
NASA photo error puts Mount Everest in India - Agence France Presse
