The Martians invaded Earth in 1938, but most people weren’t worried. The scale of the panic created by one of history’s most famous hoaxes — Orson Welles’s radio dramatisation of H G Wells’s novel The War of the Worlds, partly presented as if it were a real news report of an alien invasion — has been exaggerated. Such a trick might be even tougher to pull off in today’s connected world and atomised media environment. But it’s also a world of fake news, deepfakes and old-fashioned mischief. If one were to call up an orange man and introduce oneself as a little green man, one may be able to negotiate a tariff exemption for Mars.

It stands to reason, then, that the International Academy of Astronautics’s updated guidance for researchers on how to deal with potential signals from extraterrestrial civilisations has been extra careful compared to the 2010 iteration. Information should be handled with “extreme care”, and “best practices and tools in science communication should be employed” to convey it to non-specialist audiences. It’s cautious about social-media engagement, recognising the danger of researchers being trolled.

What policies might alien societies have for such an eventuality? It’s impossible to tell — anthropomorphising what could be radically different forms of life would be a misguided effort. But perhaps, after taking a look at humanity in all its chaos, they’ll echo one part of IAA guidelines: “Handle with extreme care.”