[Textbook-l] NPOV (Was: Textbooks)

[Toby Bartels]

LittleDan wrote in part:

>And facts can be contravercial too. UFO sightings are
>called 'facts', but they are, of course, disputed.
>They are considered evidence for sentient life on
>other planets, but the mainstream considers it false
>evidence and therefore defenately a false conclusion.

It's generally uncontroversial that X saw lights in the sky;
occasionally, people suspect that X was drunk or lying,
but even then it's uncontroversial what X /claimed/ to have seen.
What's controversial is that the lights came from a flying object
and if so, whether that object has been correctly identified
as (say) a weather balloon.

And then sometimes, it may be uncontroversial that X saw a flying object
and that nobody has managed to identify the object -- a literal UFO.
Still, the conclusion that the object must be an interstellar spacecraft
is bound to remain controversial.

Whether all this is relevant to a textbook on astronomy
(which typically deals with stars and interstellar gases)
is another matter entirely.


-- Toby