One of my academic areas of expertise way back in the day (late '80s and early '90s) were the so-called “Mitochondrial Eve” and “Out of Africa” hypotheses. The absolute mangling of this shit by journalists even at the time was migraine-inducing and it’s gotten much worse in the decades since then. It hasn’t helped that subsequent generations of scholars have mangled the whole deal even worse. The only advice I can offer people is that if the article (scholastic or popular) contains the word “Neanderthal” anywhere, just toss it.