> You don't get published for confirming existing theory (Sad but true, to an extent) > So I'd bet against it.

That argument would seem to imply that all published research is wrong

Perhaps the 65000 years people didn't leave any descendants. Or perhaps that DNA research wasn't definitive.

You say there are multiple things that contradict it. What are the others? It can't be evidence of people being there at more recent times -- that doesn't contradict evidence that they were there earlier.

You wrote:

"Multiple things have pointed to way less than 65,000 years (As per link)"

But that's obvious. The field of paleontology/archeology works with any evidence that suggests older. One confirmed finding of "older" is enough to redate and trump multiple newer findings.

That makes perfect sense.

In other words, dating an archaeological finding gives you a lower bound of how long there has been human activity on the site. Finding something older does not contradict previous results - and there are good reasons why older things are more difficult to find so absence of evidence is not (strong) evidence of absence.

> older things are more difficult to find so absence of evidence is not (strong) evidence of absence.

I agree but I'd expect some sort of logrithm though. But perhaps not.

As per the article Australia had the extinctions which line up with an earlier time period.

And as per the article evidently it's not PC to imply humans did it. There's more than science going on here.

I just want a real independent expert to comment not someone with an agenda like PoP.

I'd hesitate to generalize across fields which attack problems of different scopes of difficulties, but when I see authors follow a scientific dialogue, I see them publish twists of experiments which efficiently answer a few critical potential avenues of an argument, rather than simply replication vs. refutation.

The particular lead scientist in this case is a huge proponent of replication. They published the raw data along with their findings so that others can repeat the experiments.

> You don't get published for confirming existing theory (Sad but true, to an extent)

Reproducing studies and publishing the results is a hallmark of science so I'm not sure I understand what you're referring to.

What he is saying is that there are no kudo's for publishing work that just confirms something. Research grants are given for new work not for doing confirming followup work.

This has become a problem in recent decades and has led to certain systemic problems that have been discussed in various places in recent months.

If you say something like "I am submitting this grant request to replicate the experiments of X who have published results Y so that we can confirm X's results" then your grant application will most likely be refused.

Why is it so hard to get published when you attempt to reproduce a study and fail to do so? Papers rejected by the journals the published the original research is apparently the norm.