I live here, I THINK know his type too well: this is the type of guy who nicely recites all the BS arguments he read all around and been fed with by corporate shills and then gets annoyed when you systematically kill ALL of them with real facts (i.e. data from
independent sources) over the course of the soup or antipasti - by the end of the main course he's either annoyed as hell but admits he might be wrong or (more likely) switched to a different topic to avoid further embarrassment on his own turf in front his wife/gf/whoever he brought to the dinner...
Of course, I could be dead wrong and he offers follow-up in email and next thing you know is he's publishing his new piece, with an honest comment and new, real facts this time...
...ehh, I should wake up.