Therein lies the rub. The problem with a layperson doing this kind of analysis is that they might not even realize that certain beliefs are unfounded assumptions. Obviously experts are also vulnerable to the same thing, and they can have other biases, but they won't make the unintuitive mistakes that their field has learned to avoid through empirical study.
I guess what this argues for is peer review, which I suppose is what this comments section is in a sense. But the article doesn't link to any criticism, nor does it seek it out.
So an uninformed reader (with less background than either to critically evaluate the work) should, all else equal, prefer the analysis of an expert. That's not to say the expert cannot be wrong, but a non-expert has a greater need to establish the credibility of their argument.
It’s what you don’t know that you don’t know that matters.