It does for me, because his criticism (since shown to be wrong) never included the claim that KYBER was broken, just that it wasn't perfect and that he was unfairly treated.
Cranks and assholes occasionally are unfairly treated, but generally are fairly ignored - the effort of dealing with their claims aren't worth it.
As an outsider, "respected cryptographer makes a narrow technical claim and is brushed off by NIST" and "sore loser that no-one talks to complains that people aren't entertaining his latest complaint about the ref" are very different situations, from which I will take very different actions.
You're making decisions based on trivial social factors instead of the only salient point, which is that NIST had proven itself to be corrupted in the past when it comes to setting cryptographic standards.
Cranks and assholes occasionally are unfairly treated, but generally are fairly ignored - the effort of dealing with their claims aren't worth it.
As an outsider, "respected cryptographer makes a narrow technical claim and is brushed off by NIST" and "sore loser that no-one talks to complains that people aren't entertaining his latest complaint about the ref" are very different situations, from which I will take very different actions.
This is looking more and more like the latter!