Quite so. They are not proposing a blacklist of all people without degrees in their subject matter.. they are presenting general guidelines to skepticism to a group of people (TEDx organizers) who seem to have forgotten their skeptics cap at home a few times too often.
There should be nothing controversial about telling people to be on their toes when somebody without a relevant degree tries to tell you something fantastic.
You may not have noticed, but HN is fairly negative about college degrees, so many people probably see the bit about degrees as a personal attack on their beliefs.
But on HN people tend to show their working, rather than using an irrelevant degree as a badge of authority.
There's a difference between saying "I think this is the case; here's why I think it; it needs a bit of iteration" and "I have a degree (in X); here's the truth about Y; some people disagree but they are wrong; I tried to publish this on Z but they are controlled by shills of the big industry and they squashed my free speech rights".
There should be nothing controversial about telling people to be on their toes when somebody without a relevant degree tries to tell you something fantastic.