Anyone else get frustrated with the accepted practice in astronomy to (a) alter colors and (b) show the non-visible light spectrum.
Because it results in radically different images from what we can see with our human eye and its hugely misleading to the general public.
NASA has a whole article on this subject; it’s a great read.
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/science-behi...
I do get what you are trying to say here and I know I'm taking your argument to the extreme, but... bear in mind that even 2 randomly selected humans would see different things looking at the same object.
Even though no human can see the light that JWST is capturing doesn't mean it is not there. The colors are false indeed (compared to what a typical human would perceive as color), but then we also would get absolutely no pictures from JWST to look at.
Is setting an ISO radically changing things?
Is setting an exposure time radically changing things?
Is having an RGGB bayer pattern radically changing things?
Is having only a 91% quantum efficiency sensor radically changing things?
The questions keep going, I could ask about hot pixel removal, denoise, contrast and saturation, wavelength response curves.
Cameras aren't eyes.
Photos aren't biochemical reactions.
Regular consumer cameras are designed to be as close as possible to what the human eye sees. They're very obviously chosen to be responsive to R, G and B. Not infrared, yellow and UVB.
An image like this is not meant to try to match the human eye.
To try to say all cameras don't match the eyes is a false equivalence. Some are purposefully trying to match, some are purposefully trying not to (like this one).
It's all false color to make something look good.
Cameras are still designed to try to be able to match what the human eye perceives, regardless of what you edit afterwards.
An infrared telescope is not. Totally and utterly different. They're not the same.
Edit: and what is misleading about it? You have to understand how the image is made. But I think NASA is making that clear, even more with the article you linked. What should NASA do otherwise? Not share these images with the public? That doesn't sound like something nice and helpful.
Good! That's why we have spent $10B on it!
If you want to take issue with something then I'd save my anger for the cameras that no longer show you what you are looking at, not for a scientific instrument doing exactly what it is meant to do and adaptations to show the output to the general public.