From this article on very cool research tracking plant and animal spreads between Polynesia and America, we get the gem:
Along the way the new research finally sinks the already fragile Kon-Tiki raft which Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl used in 1947 to show that Polynesians may have hailed from South America.
Um, no, it doesn’t. In fact, the person interviewed says it doesn’t when asked. What sunk Heyerdahl’s theory is the genetic evidence that links Polynesians to migrations from East Asia, not South America.
If anything, it underlines one of the more important bits of Heyerdahl’s work: that the technology available to the peoples of the era really did allow them to reliably sail huge distances.
Is having a reporter who actually knows what they’re writing about - or at least capable of enough research to fake it well - too much to ask?