A recent question Jeopardy got very wrong: the species recently gene sequenced proving it interbred with us (or ours)? (A: What is Neanderthal.)
The answer is right, but the question not. How can one say “they” interbred with “us” when the proof is having identified Neanderthal DNA as part of “ours”? We are presumably some mix, in other words, part this, part that, more this, less that, perhaps, but with at least some us-ness from each.
There are two problems with getting something like that so blatantly wrong. One is just plain sloppy thinking, sooner or later bound to be seriously misleading. The other is a falsely constructed sense of who we think “we” are, with implications for how the “other” ends up getting treated.
–Ricardo Bods, The Unauthorized Posthumous Autobiography, serialized in advance in The M T Mirror Times Mirror’s literary review, Shattered.
This is just one of many examples of DNA hokum….