The guys is expressing his opinion. No doubt in somewhat vague terms, but I feel like I have a good sense of what he means.
Also it's easy to say to anyone who expresses an opinion to back it up with a rigorous scientific study. But that can simply be a rhetorical technique to limit discussion.
The virtue of sustainability...what does sustainable mean? Stable, static. Progress means dynamic and changing, it means being forced to adapt when things have changed in a direction you didn't plan.
Okay, what about the society? Chromosomes can't be changed. You can't change your race or gender or who your parents were, so how can you judge someone based on those things? Scientific progress is made by human minds. Arguing about getting more women/blacks/jews/gays/who-ever into a field isn't helpful. It doesn't advance science, it turns it into a meta-discussion about people who do science.
I see a lot of meaning in both, and I haven't even started reading the article yet (I'll do it after I grab a coffee.)
He's talking like a mathematics professor who states some of the steps of his proof and expects the students to be smart enough to fill in the blanks and see his logic :-P
"A society that worries itself about which chromosomes scientists have isn't a society that takes science education seriously."
Sentences like these make a lot of sense, until you think about them and realize they don't actually mean anything.