I don't know which comments you are referring to exactly, but I would like to add that the comments by Motl should be taken very, very, very carefully. He is a climate change denier who believes women are over-represented in STEM. In fact his blog post on this article is titled: "How feminism helped to poison and politicize symplectic geometry".

Not a reliable source of judgement by any stretch of the imagination.

Edit: If you start reading the comments make sure you read to the end, where actual mathematicians are commenting.