Yes, “reflexively abrasive” is a perfect way to describe his approach. He suffered from several awkward interactions at the conference, where he misinterpreted basic lines of questioning from the audience as a personal attack. He is a braggart, it is true. Those individuals who have gone through an awakening of sorts and wind up in the domain of aether-alternative physics, or New Age, often present as impulsive covert narcissists. None of that is to say anyone presenting such behavior is bad.
The Phd laden world of officialdom and academia often casts these kinds of people out very early in their lives, leading to fanatical tendencies. Usually, these people have high IQs, are artistically inclined instead of quantitatively inclined, and represent a free-thinking element of society. Having traversed the alternative physics world for over a decade, I’ve run into this repeatedly. Ironically, in my original example of Wheeler’s oddly construed attacks, Langan behaves in precisely the same way.
I know this from direct experience, having been hurled out of officialdom and told it was due to my disobedience, that is, the audacity to write a thesis dismantling a sacred cow in biophysics. Having been raised in an NPD household, with NPD boomer parents and a malignantly narcissistic sibling, and having attempted to reconcile my mental health with my cumulative life experience, I have a good eye for trauma indicators. If you have not yet read my posts on Dollard’s flavor of crazy, please consider.