Incorrect. Chimpanzees share 94% of our DNA, whereas Neanderthals shared 99.7% of our DNA. Rather than being halfway "between" chimps and humans, they were actually 95% of the way to the human side...which explains why we were able to intrebreed with them.
To put it into perspective, Neanderthals and humans differed by only 0.3%, just twice the difference of 0.15% between some Africans and Europeans.
he work was difficult, Paabo admits, particularly as the techniques used were sensitive and tended to pick up outside DNA contamination. He also said the bones had been shellacked, which could have preserved the DNA and protected them from contamination by modern DNA.
He said his team ran four separate tests for authenticity - checking whether other amino acids had survived, making sure the DNA sequences they found did not exist in modern humans, making sure the DNA could be replicated in their own lab and then getting other labs to duplicate their results. Comparisons with the DNA of modern humans and of apes showed the Neanderthal was about halfway between a modern human and a chimpanzee.