He does not have to understand the code, he could download the paper and study it... at least, you'd expect a Dr would do some research before talking.
He could download the code, examine it himself, compile and verify the hash. I realize that examining the code line-by-line isn't trivial, but it's been open source from the start and no one has found a hidden function like DO "On May 5, 2014, Satoshi gets all the bitcoins." Lol