Can't have it both ways, can you?

Scientist amazes me about how they drawn conclusion, what they conjecture, and what they are willing to accept and what they choose to reject.

Last month there was a story about the discovery of a cave or dwelling place at which was discovered a dog bone in a fire pit. The conclusion of the matter was that man had domesticated dogs much earlier than previously believed and that man
raised dogs as a food source.

Now the truth could have been that a man discovered the rotting remains of an animal that had been killed or died of natural causes and decided to burn the remains so he could sleep or live in a peaceful and less smelly environment.

It is common among some peoples to burn the bodies of their dead so if we were to find bones in a fire pit are we to assume the inhabitants were cannibals?

On the other hand, a book describes an ancient city in great detail and an archaeologist happens to discover remains of that city in the place and time that the book says it existed and from the way it was built it fits the books described to a T. But because the entire city was not unearthed some scientist reject the city as being the one in the book.

People are willing to accept one wild story based on scant data even though there is more likely many explanations for the event discovered and yet are eager to reject another that has almost a certainty of being true because the entire thing does not exist.

What about scientific polls which use sampling of people to project a whole range of truths? These samplings have been shown to hold true for the whole. To discovered what is probably 25% to 40% of an ancient city that conforms to a description of it is probably that city but is rejected by many as not being conclusive enough while one dog bone in one fire pit is enough to "prove" than man raised dogs for food many hundreds of years earlier than previously thought.

I believe what has happened is that one group is excited about their discovery and makes up a good story to make their discovery seem much more significant than it probably is while another group rejects a theory that is probably a fact because it cotridicts what they believed prior to the discovery.

Science, sonetimes is as much about egos as it is facts.