Seems like I remember that Sagan eventually softened just a bit saying he still thought Velikovsky was wrong but that he (Sagan) should not have pushed so hard to get the work banned as opposed to showing how bad the work was. patrick On 04 Jun 2014, at 13:37, Brent Watson via Utah-Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> wrote:
I remember things just a bit differently. It was Immanuel Velikovsky that proposed the Venus as a comet theory in his 1950 book "Worlds in Collision". Carl Sagan criticized him severely for his thoughts - even after he had passed on. It was a pretty bitter exchange. I met Carl Sagan one time. He was pretty opinionated and proud of his theories - but then, who isn't? He had almost no knowledge of the night sky and even said so. His contributions were not in the visual astronomy arena.
Astronomers in error? BAH! But remember LGM stars.