Facts versus Opinions

Have you ever heard someone say, “that’s just your opinion?” Or asked someone, “Is that a fact?”

Maybe you’ve wondered what it means for something to be a fact or an opinion.

A fact is a statement that can be conclusively proven or disproven, like “the moon is round.” We can use our senses and measurements to tell us that the moon is, in fact, round.

• But we didn’t know for a long time that it isn’t perfectly round: we needed telescopes to see that it has craters.
• We also didn’t know that it’s always round. It doesn’t always look round from Earth! That’s because only one side of it reflects light from the sun, and as it orbits around us, we see more and less of that side.

But remember that when we say a statement is a fact, that doesn’t mean that it’s right. “The moon is made of green cheese” is a statement of fact, but it’s not true.

• (We didn’t absolutely know it wasn’t true until we sent the first probe in 1959, but we were pretty sure.)

An opinion is something that can’t be proven conclusively, like “we should build a base on the moon.”

Here’s an easy way to remember the difference between facts and opinions: