Yes, but why save this statement until the end? The abstract and introduction say nothing of the sort.
I imagine that this document was written to a target audience, propbably so as to satify some funder's requirement, e.g. as 'post-mortem' for his ERC grants. Audiences have expectations as to what can and cannot be said. Funding organisations want/need success stories. Honesty is not always appropriate see e.g. yesterday's [1]. Honesty needs 'padding'. Meyer had numerous students, and his last sentence makes a statement about their professional work too.
Well, I think the phrase "glaring, unremitted and probably definitive failure" is not one of modest honesty, and if he would have wanted to be politically correct, he could have definitely phrased it differently. (Just trying to look at this objectively).