Science magazine has published a short comment on Flores man. Among others, it cites Maciej Henneberg, who has also left some comments on my article on Homo floresiensis.

When a research team announced last month that it had found a new species of 18,000-year-old tiny human in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores, it seemed almost too amazing to be true (Science, 29 October, p. 789). Now a small but vocal group of scientists argues that the skeleton dubbed Homo floresiensis is actually a modern human afflicted with microcephaly, a deformity characterized by a very small brain and head. Meanwhile, an Indonesian scientist who also challenges the skeleton's status has removed the skull to his own lab for study. But members of the original team of Australian and Indonesian scientists staunchly defend their analysis, and outside experts familiar with the discovery are unmoved by the critique.
The main challenge comes from paleopathologist Maciej Henneberg of the University of Adelaide in Australia and anthropologist Alan Thorne of the Australian National University in Canberra. Neither has seen the specimen itself, and as Science went to press, they had yet to publish their criticisms in a peer-reviewed journal. But Henneberg published a letter in the 31 October Adelaide Sunday Mail arguing that the skull of the Flores hominid is very similar to a 4000-year-old microcephalic modern human skull found on the island of Crete. And at a press conference on 5 November, Indonesian paleoanthropologist Teuku Jacob of Gadjah Mada University in Jakarta claimed that the specimen was a diminutive modern human. Jacob, once described as the "king of paleoanthropology" in Indonesia (Science, 6 March 1998, p. 1482), has had the skull transported to his own lab from its original depository at the Center for Archaeology in Jakarta, according to center archaeologist Radien Soejono, who is a member of the original discovery team.
In its original paper, the team considered and rejected several possible deformities, including a condition called primordial microcephalic dwarfism (Nature, 28 October, p. 1055). But Henneberg claims that the authors failed to consider a related condition called secondary microcephaly. "They jumped the gun," he told Science. Henneberg, who with Thorne favors a multiregional model of human origins that some say is at odds with the finding of a distinct but recent human species on Flores, concludes that the skeleton is "a simple Homo sapiens with a pathological growth condition." (Multiregionalism holds that modern humans evolved after 2 million years of interbreeding among worldwide populations; the evolution of a distinct species would require a long period without interbreeding).
But archaeologist Michael Morwood of the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, a leader of the team that discovered the skeleton, insists that the skeleton is not a pathological case. "We now have the remains of at least seven individuals," he says. "All are tiny, and all can be referred to as Homo floresiensis."
The team is backed by several outside researchers. Anthropologist Leslie Aiello of University College London says the skeleton cannot be that of a modern human because the postcranial bones indicate a separate species. "The pelvis is virtually identical to that of an australopithecine," much wider than the modern human pelvis, she says. And compared with modern humans, "the arms are long in relation to the legs." Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London sums up many researchers' opinions by saying, "This cannot be a peculiar modern human."

It's frustrating to lack an unambiguous answer, but this is how science is done: ideas are challenged, people wrestle over the data, and we hope, are encouraged to seek out new data to test hypotheses. I'm inclined to favor that the Flores skeleton is representative and not pathological, based on the evidence of the other fragments, but can see that Henneberg and Thorne have a reasonable argument…what would settle it once and for all, though, would be the discovery of a second skull. Let's see more digging!