Humans didn’t breed with Neanderthals
http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/65398-humans-didnt-breed-with-neanderthals
It seems I may have spoken too soon. It seems there is a perfectly plausible explanation for the Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA in our genome: we share common ancestors.
This is how science works, though. Unfortunately it tends to make ignorant people think that science is incapable of discovering the ‘truth’ (it is out there!) and that ‘truth’ is malleable by anyone who wants to have a different opinion. While science gets started as nothing more than opinion, that opinion must be backed up with facts and must explain _all_ the facts that are available, not just a few selected ones. When someone comes up with a better opinion it is because it better explains the available facts. Scientists get excited when a ‘story’ (opinion) predicts something that is subsequently discovered as a new fact (why Einstein is such a hero). Sometimes it is very difficult, expensive and/or time consuming to collect new facts (for instance, all this about the Higgs boson) and stories are all we have to work with (see string theory for an example). When (seemingly willfully) ignorant people claim that science and scientists can’t agree, they are often discussing areas of research that are novel or where facts are “difficult, expensive and/or time consuming to collect” and thus opinions/stories are evolving. Because that sort of research is likely to get the most press, these (willfully) ignorant people then attack any part of science they don’t agree with (such as evolution) and point to the bits where there is a flux in agreement amongst scientists as justification.
