[selfhifive]

First the unrelated concepts argument. It's generally hard to know if a concept is related to your research without understanding it or knowing about it. Then there's the dunning kruger effect where we overestimate our own abilities. It's likely that there was a tangential link and the author failed to see it. Ironically her failure to see the relation possibly led to a poor impression.

The argument of not having family members to talk about research is absurd because you always have some colleagues talking shop.

The language argument fails because every year many immigrant students with English as a second language take the same exams and do well.