The quote is about fluency, not accent. The first sentence is correct. The second sentence is the hilarious part; I read it as "linguists are generally idiots." It is harder for me to survey linguists than the literature, but in my limited attempt, it appears correct.
NPR reports on a study giving volprioc acid to adults and training them on pitch (singing):
Brain plasticity is useful for a whole lot more than learning pitch. As the article notes it would be invaluable for training one's ear to pick up sounds of foreign languages, but also it seems reasonable to this commentator that high levels of plasticity during rationality training or other forms of self-development would result in more transformative results.