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I read this humorous short story in a SF&F collection, more than 20 years ago. I am positive is it by a very famous SF writer but I forgot whom.

It is a fiction, but in a world that, alas, could very well be ours. So technically, neither SF nor Fantasy, but because of its author and the decision of the editor to publish it (and this was a collection so probably it had already been previously published in an SF&F magazine) I consider it is "on topic".

It is about a SF writer telling to his friends, just for fun, having first claimed he was a expert on the field and present at the event, a totally harebrained story about a nuclear reactor gone critical that instead of exploding, has created an antigravity field around it (the "anti-gravity" tag does not exist, so I used the "artificial-gravity" tag instead).

Unfortunately for him, some crackpot heard him, and believed that his story was true rather than a joke. So his story was published in one of the many pseudoscience publications, mentioning his name and calling him a reliable authority, an "expert" who had personally attended the event.

So he kept receiving an avalanche of letters, some calling him a liar and pointing out the many scientific inconsistencies, but most of them be "believers" who wanted more details.

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    It is, as you say, a purely mundane story about a man who is overheard making an outlandish claim and then is believed by others.
    – Valorum
    Commented Aug 25 at 17:17
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    @valorum Yes, but quite a few editors decided to include it in their collections... I am not the only one to believe that though it is indeed "mundane" in fits into SF&F spirit.
    – Alfred
    Commented Aug 25 at 17:41
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    @Valorum - I think if the interior speculative fiction story is substantial enough—i.e. its own narrative, not just a few sentences summarizing a claim—we can count it for that reason, in much the same vein as the film version of The Wizard of Oz. Otherwise, I agree, merely having science in a story does not make it "science fiction," otherwise we would be taking questions about the TV show The Big Bang Theory.
    – Adamant
    Commented Aug 25 at 18:13
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    @Adamant The "interior speculative fiction" indeed represents more than half the whole story, is quite substantial, and uses very incorrect but rather original "speculative physics". It is indeed close to "Wizard of Oz", not BBT.
    – Alfred
    Commented Aug 25 at 19:36
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    Apparently not the one you're looking for, your description has some elements in common with Charles Stross's A Tall Tale.
    – Ray
    Commented Aug 26 at 5:18

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"What Goes Up" by Arthur C. Clarke, one of his Tales from the White Hart.

The story narrated by Purvis is provoked by the entry of a U.F.O. enthusiast into the White Hart. In order to quell his stories, Purvis spins a tale describing an attempt by an Australian researcher nicknamed "Dr. Cavor" to develop atomic power. Cavor designs and builds an atomic generator, but by some accident, he ends up creating a field of lower gravity around the generator, such that from a physics point of view it has been elevated to an altitude of several thousand miles

The story is enough to silence the U.F.O. believer; however, Purvis later gets thousands of letters from other believers, much to his annoyance, because the story was not meant to be taken seriously.

Here's the listing of where the story has appeared. PS. I appreciate your use of the word hare-brained - there is a rabbit in the story.

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    Yes ! Now you mention it, I remember about the rabbit (or rabbits ?) ! My use of "harebrained" was purely coincidental... or maybe a subliminal memory ?
    – Alfred
    Commented Aug 25 at 17:39
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    "Dr. Cavor" is definitely a reference to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_First_Men_in_the_Moon
    – ronno
    Commented Aug 26 at 14:02

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