Dalhousie, "they" (do you mean the publishers?) can't simply decide for themselves it's not an issue. These excerpts aren't simply boilerplate wording from NASA. They're complete ripoffs of other people's work.
Unfortunately, with the vast amounts of fiction being published today, writers try to get away with this stuff on a regular basis. And it's theft of intellectual property. I'm not sure why you feel this is such a trivial issue. If someone cut-and-pasted a scientific report and published it under their own name, surely you'd think that was wrong?
