Board Thread:Episode Discussions/@comment-25319479-20180614110007/@comment-1512913-20180614183410

No, it's not. It was just a HYPOTHESIS. Kabuto and Orochimaru worked with a hypothesis that Senju chakra/DNA + Uchiha chakra/DNA = Rinnegan. So their assumption was, that the Rinnegan can be recreated if you put some Senju power into a Sharingan wielder. It was 'proven true' with Edo Madara, who manifested a Rinnegan, after Kabuto's Hashiboob tempering. Except it really wasn't proven true, because they weren't aware that Madara was Indra's incarnate and Hashirama Asura's incarnate and that's what made the Rinnegan appear.

Likewise, they weren't aware of the Rinne Sharingan, so they worked with assumption that the Rinnegan is a higher stage of Sharingan. How about people take all information into consideration, rather than just 'x was said/shown in y chapter' while ignoring everything that's been clarified since?