The earliest known ancestors of modern humans might have reproduced with early chimpanzees to create a hybrid species, a new genetic analysis suggests.I thought the chimp/human hybrid story that has been in the news a bit recently was pretty interesting, but mainstream media coverage of science stories usually leaves me with a lot more questions.
I just came across this criticism of the Nature paper that the hybrid story is based on, and things make a bit more sense now:
the "provocative" theory that early hominids were human-chimpanzee hybrids has no empirical support! It is provided in the paper only because it is provocative. It is making news headlines only because it is provocative! ... It is not an impossible hypothesis, but it is not currently justified.
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When I was doing my senior thesis in college, my mentor, who was a postdoc at the time, told me this widely known catch-all when considering the inclusion of Nature publications to support one's own professional work:
"If it's in Nature, it must be wrong."
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