Derek Lowe is someone whom I greatly admire and his work as a science communicator is a true service to the profession and to science at large. It is not intended as an insult in any way. I've known a great number of competent chemists, but few are as effective as communicators as he is.

I think it says more about the person reading it as an implicit insult than it does OP. I am, I think, a fairly competent scientist, and know many great scientists. I know very few great scientific communicators.