That's an incredibly poor analogy, because it isn't science, it's make-believe. There are no "right" or "wrong" answers, and there sure as hell isn't going to be a test. The point of fiction is not to provide data points for continuity, it's to entertain and stimulate the imagination. Its "relevance" is in what it makes us think and feel, not whether it's compatible with some other story.
And seriously, back in the first generation of Trek novels, the books often had an impressionistic relationship with onscreen continuity, since back then it was an accepted norm for novelizations and adaptations to take creative liberties rather than being slavishly accurate. They were just stories, alternative interpretations of the general ideas and characters of a series, since it was understood that this was fiction and the premise and characters were just themes to explore variations on, not historical facts that had to be documented correctly. Goodness knows, back then I often wished some of the books would be more faithful to the screen, but fans these days have prioritized continuity to a toxic extreme, to the point of devaluing literally everything else about fiction, and it's just gone insanely too far.
