...there are two different ways to measure this cosmic expansion rate, and they don’t agree. One method looks deep into the past by analyzing cosmic microwave background radiation, the faint afterglow of the Big Bang. The other studies Cepheid variable stars in nearby galaxies, whose brightness allows astronomers to map more recent expansion.
You’d expect both methods to give the same answer. Instead, they disagree—by a lot. And this mismatch is what scientists call the Hubble tension...Webb’s data agrees with Hubble’s and completely rules out measurement error as the cause of the discrepancy. It’s now harder than ever to explain away the tension as a statistical fluke. This inconsistency suggests something big might be missing from our understanding of the universe - something beyond current theories involving dark matter, dark energy, or even gravity itself. When the same universe appears to expand at different rates depending on how and where you look, it raises the possibility that our entire cosmological model may need rethinking.
Most rational people will completely ignore this theory, but what if it's just God fucking with us?
I could've sworn there was a thought experiment for an omnipotent being modifying the universe but only when we are intentionally trying to study it, but this is all I could find. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon
This concept is stuck in my mind as "Cartesian demon" but that only leads to the above which is more about the idea that we could be in a simulated reality. It's possible I'm getting an xkcd comic mixed in but I couldn't find it either based on a quick search.
Edit: The comic was something like a sliding scale (or maybe a flow chart) of different views of reality. On one end was everything is fake, even self, and the other end was that everything is real and measureable. Somewhere in the middle was the idea that reality exists but we can't measure it properly or objectively. Something like that. But it's also possible this comic was unrelated to whatever I'm remembering as "Cartesian demon" and I'm getting mixed up.