[sigy]

I had the same impression. The only other alternative possibility I could come up with was that the author was willingly playing in meta irony, or that they were someone who feels extremely specialized in something and must cast aspersions at those who are not.

My counterpoint to this article would simply be:

Beware of opinions of self-selecting experts, especially those with a chip on their shoulder.

As mentioned above in the discussion, you do really need specialists and generalists working together to solve the hardest problems. The specialists deserve no more credit for progress than the systems thinkers who choose to operate at the macro level and understand full well why this is essential.