Hmm...kind of hard to tell from this article if the issue is old guard in Computer Science blocking new thinking but shutting them down as not professional or solid AI experts identifying a research fraud. It's hard to say just from the article alone. The established academia tend to be an insider club that only gives stamp of approval to those who have followed their track to the masters and PhD level monitored and approved by one of their own. When an outsider, especially one with only a BS, posits wholly new ideas, they immediately go to their standard position of infantile, messy, chaotic, subpar, not academically rigid etc. I've seen this in archaeology.

A good example was the discovery of the new pre-human species in a cave in South Africa. The established academia poo-poo'd the idea that the findings discovered a new pre-human. It took a few years of hard study and multiple conferences for the old guard to accept a new pre-human was really discovered.