Beautiful, thank you.
Both 'we should be trying to prove ourselves wrong' and 'Being so far out of line with other evidence means that the evidence in favor of hominids needs to be exceptionally rock solid' can both be valid at the same time. The base rate of a 'false positive' for extraordinary claims that conflict with an existing body of evidence is typically much higher so confidence in the evidence would need to quite strong for that piece of evidence to move the consensus.
I'd consider myself largely a frequentist but the relevant xkcd [1] comes to mind
I'd argue that ignoring that aspect can amplify one's susceptiblity to confirmation bias if one is predisposed to believing in a very early American hominid story for whatever reason.
[1] https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/frequentists_vs_bayesians_2x.pn...
As a side note, I've seen people strike through stuff out on HN, and I'd like to strike through this claim to emphasize there's a correction; it's not in the undocumented features repo[1], and I've tried a few standard things like ~this~ and ~~this~~ and -this- and --this-- and have never figured it out. Can anyone tell me what the markdown is?
[1] https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented