I'm as qualified as any other PL researcher (or Wikipedian) to determine the validity of a source.
Meh, as a researcher and grad student myself I wouldn't say that. You earn the qualification to judge notability of scholarly works after defending your dissertation and publishing significant work for the community. That's kind of how the system works.
I'd say that when someone 'earns the qualification' is much less important than whether they 'have what it takes'. It's a bit arbitrary to suggest someone only has what it takes after a bit of paperwork has been completed. Failing a dissertation defense is rare and after having published the first work of minor notability, you're as good as set. By that standard, he is probably right that he is qualified.
Has he published anything? I'm not saying he hasn't or that he won't, but I don't see his name on any of the Frenetic papers [1], he doesn't have anything listed on his site [2], and I couldn't find anything by him on Google Scholar. So, even by your definition of qualified, I don't think he is, yet.
Meh, as a researcher and grad student myself I wouldn't say that. You earn the qualification to judge notability of scholarly works after defending your dissertation and publishing significant work for the community. That's kind of how the system works.