Yes, that claim is spurious, since they date Homo Sapiens remains to 100,000 years in the same areas that Neanderthals were living.
In fact, Herto Man, a fully modern Homo Sapiens dated to 160 k years old and found in the Afar region of East Africa leads many to speculate that modern human go back 200k years. Reading the fossil record is quite like reading book with most of the pages missing. There are a lot of reasonable hypothesis, hanging around out there, each with its vocal supporters. As long as the support for one set does not intimidate research into other well founded ideas, this back and forth is healthy.